The Shadows of Asgard
by KhamanV
Summary: Trapped by memories of his past and haunting his own present, Loki, the shadow king of Asgard, finds himself hunted by something far more deadly than any ghost. Without allies or any friendly word to help him, he must figure out why he's not the hunter's sole target - and what any chance of surviving his stolen throne might have to do with his buried youth.
1. Chapter 1

**The Shadows of Asgard**

 _"And here I stand, with all my lore,_

 _Poor fool, no wiser than before." ~ Goethe's 'Faust'_

 _. . ._

1.

. . .

There were ghosts in all the corners of the great golden hall. Loki could see each of them from where he slumped on the throne, little echoes of everything that had come before, dead haunts, old memories. The drone of the king's advisors warred with the whispers of the shades, and none of it did more than tickle an ear hidden well under a veil of illusive grey hair. He stared at the dead, veiled Frigga gliding from shadow to shadow, his gray-green eyes masked behind Odin's steely one were not quite focused right, and he knew he was tired enough to see through into his own waking dreams.

He lifted a hand that wavered just slightly, an old man's hand, a younger man's honest tremble, and from his throat came Odin's voice. "Enough for now," said Loki, gravelly and weary and still watching the ghosts, knowing they weren't really there. Knowing they were always with him. "The hour is late. I will take my rest, and I will consider these matters on the morrow."

The first among the advisors, a younger lord with a parcel of responsibility on the edges of Asgard itself, opened his mouth and then shut it as Loki's gnarled fingers flicked towards the proposals splayed across the thick goldenwood table set near the throne. He had for the last hour suspected that the king was not really listening to him, but noble propriety and good old common sense told him to not confront the All-Father with that observation. The entire kingdom knew of the king's deep-stricken griefs, one Queen and one prince lost, and they knelt before that grief as best they could. "Of course, your Majesty," the lord said instead with a slight bow of his chin. "We will be happy to leave our findings with you until you call for us."

Loki grunted just as Odin would, neither approving nor disapproving, and hefted himself out of the throne with another sharp gesture towards the royal Einherjar. He would, of course, look at the records of things he had indeed not heard at all. As a king ought, in serving his realm. An old king, to be sure, sorrowful and weary. It was an easy act now, these last several months. Wearing a skin not his own, speaking in a voice that sounded nothing like his own, sleeping in a room that was not shaped for his body. He gestured again at the golden guards, allowing them to guide his way for him, knowing that all his ghosts would follow.

In privacy, he would look at them, then. And try to sleep.

In whatever privacy a king could steal for himself, which was the sparsest of luxuries.

. . .

Only when the doors were shut and a whisper set on the bolt to alert him to any approach, did Loki let the illusion go. It stripped from him like a physical weight, and he did not pass by Odin's long mirror to see the hollows sharpening in his face. He felt no lighter with the masks gone, knowing he had only a few hours to rest and regain his mental and magical energy. Kings too seldom slept at night like ordinary men, he'd found. And the All-Father's gift of the Sleep, that trance so close to death, once a thing he'd looked at with bemusement and even a little worried distaste, now seemed in fact a godly solace.

But it was not for him. It would be impossible to even attempt that perfect resting coma, much less maintain the constant illusion he had to wear well enough to trick his way past the healer Eir as she monitored the Sleep. Then, to boot, there were secrets to accessing it he didn't know. Riddles to the magical core of that exhaustion and rejuvenation, something tied to the very essence of Kingship. And here he was, a pretender who wore a simulacra of the crown. Only the weight of Gungnir in his hand was real.

Loki was reminded of that fact every day. Seeing himself in the mirror was too much. Looking at the ghosts was bad enough. The curtains of Odin's private chamber had been drawn closed by its tenders, staff and servants who left him alone when he was in residence as demanded. He crossed to them past the chests and cabinets that held various robes and armor, and pushed the heaviest of the curtains back, leaving only a veil of silken gauze between him and the midnight sky of Asgard. Just to be sure he stayed in shadow, if anyone with a sharp enough eye thought to glance this high up. He wrinkled his nose, smelling rain on the air. A storm coming, predicted by the day's sages. One meant to cool the hot night and soothe the morning.

It didn't soothe him. Still, Loki stepped back and let the heavier curtains stay where he'd pushed them, deciding the night wind might be pleasant regardless of what he felt. Then he stayed there, wrapped in the shadows of the king's chamber, hidden from the night outside, realizing he was still restless. Too exhausted to sleep, too awake to do much except let his thoughts lead him around in circles.

He glanced back over his shoulder, seeing nothing and no one, except the memories haunting his mind, and he looked at the bed with all its silks and furs, feeling something cold steal over him. Nothing in this room was his.

So it was. Every night. All this, for what he thought he wanted. A sense of pressure struck Loki - he realized his hand had crept up to grasp at his own face, a half-mask of fingers and bone. He tore it away as if he'd burned himself, then he yanked the gold cloak from his shoulders and flung it at the mirror set tall in the corner, like he did most nights. The tangle of his own hair struck him in the face at the violence of his action, long tendrils oiled from sweat and exhaustion.

He glanced at the far wall, and the door almost hidden in it. There was a set of chambers beyond, and a staircase, and then a golden hallway sparsely but viciously guarded. On the other side of that was the queen's private tower. Empty now. Cold, even though Odin's word and his own in Odin's voice kept it and its gardens tended daily.

His feet took him towards it, one hand reaching out to touching the door as if instead it would open to the realm of Death Herself, revealing the lost queen if only she could just come back over the threshold. When it opened under his hand, there was nothing. Only the dim chamber beyond, part of what Odin and Frigga shared in private.

Loki stood there for a while, staring at the emptiness of the room beyond. Then he plunged through and on into the silent paths, still wrapped in the shadows, and mindful of where all those few but alert guards patrolled.

. . .

There was a long railing along the outside edge of the queen's solar, a beautiful parapet of whorled steel and gold, held fast by damascene pillars. Loki rested his palms on it, leaning over to look at the living garden that lay just below. Frigga herself had sometimes tended to it, alongside the healer Eir and her own handmaidens, but mostly she had been content to let the palace gardeners keep it fresh. If a new variety of flower struck her eye, she would have been down in the dirt the next morning, personally making space for it where the sun would love its petals best. And she would watch over it, of course. But Frigga was then yet the queen, and there were many things she couldn't give all her time to, even if she wanted. The flowers, her threadwork, her family…

Loki pulled his hands away, glancing down at the arrangement of empty benches on either side of him. Places where the handmaidens often sat and chattered with each other as they waited to serve the queen's needs. Nostalgia hit him with sharp violence. The sweep of rich brocade fabric and softer silks, the smell of mixing perfumes both musky and floral, whispers and glances. A chill went over him. He recognized it as the shape of all the old griefs that lived inside him, let them settle against his spine. Old friends. The only ones he had left.

There was no candle left behind at night in the empty chambers of lost Frigga. He passed into her private solar in the dark, finding that oddly fitting, and stood in the center of the silence for a long time. The ghosts were here, too. Of course they were. If he looked out at the benches again, he would see them. Loki made sure not to turn, and he made equally sure not to touch his own face again, just below his eyes. He didn't need to know what he already knew.

. . .

 _Ago_ ~

It was Loki's way to know damn well what he was walking into before he actually walked into it, whether the moment was an important one or not. He observed the solar with secret magic first, saw the three handmaidens clutched together giggling on the low stone benches that overlooked the garden, and the newest addition to the group, silent with something in her hand that kept her attention. He arched an eyebrow at that. The dawn cast the moment into a pastel display, matching rose-colored and gold-gilt gowns to match the spring flowers below. He smiled, bemused by the girls' bright energy, and when he did finally come through the doorway in a rush of his own blacks and silvers, he made sure to look as if he'd never broke stride from the other end of the hall that led him here.

The crow aloft in the springtime fields. The contrast was always striking and more than a little purposefully grim, though certainly no one ever remarked on it. To his face, anyway. He smiled at the four handmaidens as they rose as one, genuinely cheerful despite his chosen colors, and bobbed his head with its short-cropped mess of sleek black hair in response as they each dipped in rightful curtsy. "Ladies."

"Your Highness," came the chorus, followed by a trio of giggles that had nothing to do with him.

One of the girls dipped her head a little further out, the nominal 'lead' of the group. He recognized her well enough. Brigida, the one who had thus far been in the queen's service the longest. She kept her brown hair in a tight plait, and he knew she didn't like him very much. That mattered little to him, so long as she stayed as polite as her role dictated, and she did. "Our apologies, my lord. Her Majesty is not yet taking visitors."

"Of course not," said Loki, expecting that. "I'm a little early. She's still at her letters, I take it?"

"I believe so, Your Highness." Brigida tilted her head slightly. It was the normal routine for this particular day.

"A goblet of wine, Your Highness?" The tiniest breach of etiquette, chiming in like that. Mette served only a few years less than Brigida, giving her almost as much leeway. He smiled down at the lithe young girl from Vanaheim, knowing full well the jug of wine would be on the other side of the balcony, next to a finely carved golden table, overlooking an entirely different view than the one handmaidens were sharing. "A fine cask this morning, an old one from the Dwarves."

"I see you've plenty of water from the fresh springs just up the way," Loki said, shrugging lightly and not at all visibly offended. Two could play this game, and he was better at it. He didn't feel like pretending to lose today, either. He loped towards an empty space on the edge of one of the stone benches, and he settled himself on it with lazy ease. Without stopping or giving any of the ladies a chance to intervene, he reached out towards the little table and helped himself to the iced water, the smile never leaving his face. "I think this will be just fine."

"Of course, Your Highness," said Mette, knowing when to cut her losses. She settled herself on the bench next to him in a controlled rustle of long skirts, the loser's position. Brigida, rescued from whatever ploy she'd had in mind to avoid the younger prince's company, took the space next to the new girl. The last, Helena, had to stand for a little while.

Kara, he believed the new girl's name was. Only perhaps a year into service, and so far rarely seen in the public group until the queen and the rest of the girls knew she was wholly prepared. He studied her as she reclaimed her own seat, the small book she'd been reading disappearing up into a sleeve. "Poetry?" Loki asked her. Common enough guess for books that size.

Silence for a long moment that edged into accidental insult. She was new, he could ignore that and did so. He also politely ignored the sharp elbow Brigida threw her way - but not the hot crease of anger that crept down along the girl's brow. That caught his amusement and sympathy, though his own expression never changed. "I'm afraid not, Your Highness," said Kara, the crease on her brow disappearing as fast as it came. "Only a short book of old and mostly nonsense lore. It amuses me, I regret."

"Not very fitting for a new handmaiden," chided Brigida, not about to miss an opportunity to shame a new girl in front of palace nobility. He'd seen that before, too. Many, many times. Sometimes the new handmaidens didn't last very long. Sacrifices, so Brigida might keep her position a little longer. He knew she was angling for a high place once her time at Frigga's hand was done, and the longer she served the more valuable her own name would become. The Queen knew, too, of course. If Brigida pushed too hard, it would backfire eventually. He doubted she would. The young woman was just sharp enough. "You've other tomes you ought study when given time to read."

Kara did nothing but bow her head, accepting the correction silently.

"To be sure," he said smoothly, instinctively inclined to defend anyone who might pick a good story over a dull treatise on manners and tradition. "But the morning is pleasant and the day is long, and who could possibly begrudge the mind a few momentary distractions? There will be time enough to study later."

Brigida sniffed silently through her nose, unable to contradict him in any visible way. She glanced at the new handmaiden, then at him again. "As you say, Highness."

Loki had looser rules than any of them to guide his behavior, being a prince. Bend too many, however, and he would make the new girl's life miserable instead of his own. He was aware of that, and cautious of it, but still. He knew the barb hidden under Brigida's chiding. That was obviously only the tip of what was going on. The ritual hazing, another old story he'd read before. "One of Hurstwic's drier tomes, or is it one of Gaimmena's? The latter is more accessible, and that historian had a way of finding more… enjoyably spurious tales."

"Gaimmena's, Your Highness. I must agree with your observation."

A genuine smile at her dry undertone, a little bit of an actual person hidden there that the rituals of service hadn't extinguished yet. A shred of encouragement was something he could give to help the girl, then. Nothing more. "Excellent. There's a handful more books by him in the library here, you ought to examine them if this one continues to entertain you well enough."

She nodded her head in silent thanks, a quick glance at him under the ribbons and braids of dark hair shot a lighter brown towards the ends. He examined her expression as it disappeared again, her hands fussing towards the morning's embroidery work now instead, and wondered if Brigida would succeed in breaking this one the way she had the last two. He had his doubts. This one had a little fire left. But that wasn't his story in this palace, and again, if he interfered overmuch, all he would really accomplish would be making it worse.

Too often, regardless of place or privilege, things simply weren't fair. Loki leaned back, contemplating the polite if cool silence that now filled the little aerie above the queen's garden, and then rose in a smooth catlike motion when he sensed Queen Frigga emerge from the door of her private salon. He beat the ladies by a full second, another private victory. "Good morning, Mother," he said with a courtly bow.

"Teasing my handmaidens again, Loki?" Frigga had a gentle chide in her own voice, knowing full well the usual games. The power plays that tended to happen, mostly because he was not Thor, who was vastly more comely to the ladies' eyes. Little he could do about that, except smile, be polite, and fight right back in his own way.

"I would never," he lied with airy blatantness, looking her dead in the eyes and delighted with the snort she did not actually let into the air between them. "Finished with your letters?"

"I am." She beckoned him towards the door, glancing at her girls. "We'll begin the morning lessons. Brigida? Kara in two hours. Mette, Helena, the errands I spoke of at daybreak."

"Your Majesty." The words floated behind Loki as he passed within to the solar where they often spoke, and where they regularly studied magic. He looked at the Queen's face as he moved by her, and saw something serious waiting there.

Then the door shut, leaving them in that rare privacy they could share.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

. . .

"You've something dour on your mind, Mother." Loki went to his usual seat, a low stool with just enough cushion to be forgotten underneath him when he tranced for magical practice. His legs folded aside, not the most elegant look, but comfortable. "We're not starting the morning cants right away today, I think."

Frigga looked away from him and glanced at the stack of letters resting on her desk, her fingers picking and plucking at each other in a way he knew all too well. "You and your brother have not yet seen war."

"We've fought," he said, now cocking his head in puzzlement at the flat tone in her voice. "I've fended off demons at the edge of Muspelheim, and there was that incursion of rogue Elves a while back, and-"

"Yes." Frigga interrupted him, gently. "You've both been bloodied. But you've not seen _war_." She turned away from him completely for a moment, putting away her pens and the fine black bottle of ink. "You're not children any longer. But you're also not quite men full grown. You're barely out of your third centuries."

"Don't tell Thor that, he'll pout a decade." Loki leaned back, pulling a knee forward so he could drape a wrist on it. "True, it wasn't all that long ago he was trying to pass off a little fuzz as a warrior's full beard."

A smile flitted across the queen's face as she turned to glance at him, a small but amused thing. "You'll both know when adulthood has come, when you understand better that such battle isn't a thing to crave so hungrily. I expect you'll figure it out quicker than your brother will, in certain respects."

Loki frowned. This was unusually bare, even for their private talks. "What's going on, what's this about?"

Frigga sighed and took the stool across from him, her hands still clasped before her in that taut and worried way. "I've told you the stories about Karnilla before."

The sorceress with aims to shape a realm of her own amongst the nine, a realm primed to eventually cut out the heart of Asgard itself. A traitor, and the shadow queen of those darker magics he knew to be wary of. "In context of a sorcerer's warnings especially, yes." His brow furrowed. "That her ways of magic are not ours, that there is a seduction in that kind of… but she's been gone a long time, Mother. And with her fall came your marriage and the restoration of Asgard's newest golden age."

"Gone but not dead, Loki. She was smart enough to leave her ego aside and run to ground when her allies left her. We were never able to hunt her down, knowing full well that in time her corruption would take root again." She flicked a hand towards her desk, where a thin sheaf of papers lay not far from her own. "It's begun. I've seen copies of the intercepts. She has allies again, and we don't have all their names. We plan to hunt what we can, and let others run trail for us to follow, but the war she made before will come 'round again sooner than anyone will like. We don't know yet what she knows. She'll have new weapons now. And her greatest will still be at her call - Karnilla was always a brilliant woman. She's a slow blade, and a sharp one. That, my son, makes her a terrifying threat."

Loki shifted on the stool, uncomfortable now. He licked his lips, considering. "How can I help? Do you need a messenger? If not battle, I'm fleet enough-"

"No, dearheart." She smiled. "My letters are well arranged, I've no need of another to tend them. What I need from you is for you to remember your own cleverness in the days and years to come. That's _your_ weapon, and I want you to wield it. Let Thor have his steel, and we both know he is no fool either."

He kept his mouth full shut, thinking better of the tease he had in mind. No, Thor wasn't a fool. But he could be prone to foolish things, and it seemed the older he grew, the more he followed that urge. War was apt to pull a lot more out of him.

"He'll see the war he thinks he wants, I'm afraid." Frigga looked away, unaware she was echoing his thoughts. "You'll both have dark lessons to learn from it. I pray they keep, and quickly. Such things ought need only the one teaching, and yet too many of our warriors gratefully seek that knowledge over and over again." She looked back, a small if slightly weary smile on her face. "No, this morning I thought only to warn you, so you may consider what's coming with fuller wisdom. Odin himself will make further announcements in due time. You'll know when."

He offered a wry smile back. "And now the day's meditations will be a touch more challenging than usual."

Frigga laughed. "Well, that's one good lesson to repeat. You never know how much you'll have to fight for a moment's peace to ground yourself. Muspelheim was one such teaching, yes. The real difficulties come when you think you're safe at home, but yet your mind's storm is still ever with you." She beckoned to him to resume a sorcerer's centering position, doing the same herself. "Now stop fretting and focus."

He couldn't, not yet. "You'll be safe, of course, if war comes? And Father."

She sniffed at him, still amused. "I am the very picture of safety, Loki, and any who come for me would do well to consider carefully before they strike. Odin, however, still has a fain amount of fight left in him, though he is also clever enough to be careful about it when he rides afield. Now _focus_. There's still plenty of morning left to us, and to magic."

. . .

Loki left the Queen just before the noontime, his mind muddled and weary from attempting to absorb something new about aetheric links and the ways they might mirror reality itself. He nodded absently to the waiting handmaiden, the new one again, and glanced at the neatly arranged piles of silks and embroideries that would be the day's later work for the ladies. The festival season would be coming 'round, but not for a few years yet. And by then, likely tainted by a new war. He paused and frowned at the fabrics, blinking blearily. It would be another hour's nap and a good meal before his mind wholly snapped back into alertness. Magic required a different kind of muscle, and even though he had been training at it since he had been a little boy, there was always more to learn to endure. It would be a few centuries before he had an echo of Frigga's grace and strength at the art.

War, then. A cloud's brief shadow passed between him and Asgard's sun, turning those fine fabrics grey. He shook his head, disturbed again, and by the time he blinked away the fuzziness in his vision, the sun was bright again.

Another of the handmaidens swept by at her errands, quieter Helena. She didn't disturb him, never stopped to ask if he had a need. They knew he preferred the quiet after morning practice. Weapons training would be next, in the cooler hours of the late afternoon. All of it routine. For now.

For the first time, he began to realize life's comfortable daily routine didn't mean they were safe in their golden palace. In time, danger would come to them. The shadow seemed to remain on his face as he trailed a finger along the edge of the whorled balcony railing, thinking for a while. Then he slipped off, silent, attempting to at least pretend nothing in his life had changed. For a little while, anyway.

. . .

Loki stirred in the silence of Frigga's solar, realizing the stars still gleaming outside were in position to mark the deeper night. Hours had passed while he let the ghosts take him back into old history. The shadows seemed heavier now, close and thick like the rough woven cowls draped over battlefield dead. He tried to shake them off, feeling like they were watching him. Judging him.

He realized he was breathing heavily, as if he'd gone for a run instead of simply lost himself inside his own mind. Paranoia was striking a bone deep inside him, a rib close to his heart. "I need to sleep," he whispered to himself, clinging to logic. His voice sounded like it came from someone else, some species he didn't recognize. Now he rubbed at his face, the skin feeling raw under his fingers. But it was his. His own.

Another prickle of alienated sensation struck him. His own? He tore his hands away from his face before he could feel the lines, wonder if his eyes had gone that monstrous shade of red, hating the chill that suffused his body. He buried all his thoughts, slamming the door of his mind shut on everything except a frozen, controlled silence, forced himself to look at his hands. They were pale. Shaking, bony white, not blue, and he flexed them until they came back under control. When they did, no sooner, then he strode from the room at too fast a pace.

It wasn't fleeing. He did not run, he told himself. He would not run from his own past, it was dead. Dead the night he fell from the rainbow bridge, dead the day he failed Thanos, dead the hour he pretended to pass for a corpse in Thor's arms.

But yet his steps called him a liar, on his way back through the halls to his stolen room.

The shadows left behind didn't bother to judge.

. . .

Safe in Odin's private chamber, Loki realized he was still heaving for breath. He forced himself to calm, remembering all the ways Frigga taught him to center himself, and that worked well enough to slow his thumping heart. But despite that, he knew he would require a little more time yet before he would find the sleep he needed so desperately. Adrenaline and its aftereffects took effort to drain. There was a place past exhaustion where the mind flickered too lively, and he lived there far too often now.

He pulled one of Odin's heavy chairs over to the desk, where the guards placed the younger lord's papers after the evening parley. That Eirund, that's who he was. The name came back to him at last, an unimportant man who thought himself grander. A snap of Loki's fingers lit the candles along the edge of the desk, just enough light for him to read by, and he grabbed a thin blanket to drape in his lap, like an old man might. The words on the page blurred together for him at first, but he soon began to piece together the fragments of what he'd barely heard in the throne room.

A young lord with what should have been a private matter on his hands, some tricky issue of political and personal balance between one of his own vassals and a lord of Vanaheim. Loki sighed, instantly bored and annoyed with what he was reading. Mundane, but yes, it was also necessary business for a king. And also not as prone to obvious solutions as he might have liked at that moment.

He pushed a hand through his snarling hair, and looked again at the matter, putting together the timeline in his mind to try and find the problems. The dominant one was easy enough. Love had a way of dashing apart arranged plans. That much was clear by the reports. He shook his head, knowing that was important, but also clearly not enough. "You've left some details out, Lord Eirund," he muttered. "I can tell. A good lie starts with a framework and not a tapestry. You're right on the edge of that, and I can see where you've forgotten some holes. What's the other side of this stupid little story, hm?"

Loki rolled his head back along the chair, staring at the tall gilt ceiling. At the edge of Asgard, the young lord who supplicated to him had a lady friend - not one of his own courtiers, but his cousin's vowed fiancee. And despite previous arrangements, she'd found a courtier of her own, a young warrior from Vanaheim. He recognized the village name, not far from where Thor's friend Hogun hailed. He wrinkled his nose at the thought of them, pushed it away. Not an important detail right now. So now the young lord claimed offense and bad dealings from Vanaheim's little village, and the lady caught fast in the middle, to say nothing of the warrior, had no say in the issue thus far.

Asgard no longer trafficked in strongly arranged marriages, but there had been a deal, apparently, freely made when the lady was a much younger girl. Loki reread the papers. A land deal, naturally; a grand dowry of property and thus a future's investment. The sort of unnecessarily complicated thing that could - and obviously did - crawl up the food chain to the king's own desk. He frowned, recognizing it would definitely need deeper investigation before he could attempt any sort of fair judgement.

There was a single, small painting of Odin himself near-hidden amidst the knick-knackery and the trophies Odin kept in his sanctum. To his meager credit, the old king had not been all that self-glorifying. Loki glanced at it, as he did some nights. "And what would you do this time, you old goat?"

The painting said nothing back.

"You'll leave it all to me, then? I'm tired, and not inclined to make the best decision for all involved."

Silence.

"Well, to Hel with you, anyway." Loki snorted at the portrait, then started to laugh at his own conversation in a way that echoed eerily in the large room. At hearing himself, he choked off the laughter and shoved an irritated hand at the papers. Then he slumped gracelessly, deeply, in his seat. The flames wavered, flickering shadows across his haggard face.

An hour later, he was asleep like that. The thin cover in his lap had been flung up to mask his face, just in case an enterprising soul came into the room in the morning to tend to the king despite his command. The candles flickered across that, too. Another cowl across the slack faces of the dead.

Drained and empty, Loki didn't dream. There was nothing instead, barely a rest, barely a chance to escape the trap he'd set up for himself for a few hours. Here lay the new king, once proud, now lost. He shifted in the seat now and then, finding no solace.

And all through the night, the shadows that stayed to haunt said nothing to comfort him.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

. . .

Wearing Odin's mask, Loki left the golden throne early after morning supplications to make his way down into the deeper depths of the palace. Down to where the prisons were, and a little further yet. Not a simple task to mask the eye of the particular guest he intended to visit, but then, sometimes that sharp eye was something even he needed to consult.

Not that they were ever easy visitations. For either of them.

He passed by the last brace of guards and down into the empty stone tunnels that led to the nearly buried cell at the end. The guards were ordered to not remain close, and further ordered to never listen to the prisoner, no matter what he might try to tell them. Sometimes, especially when irritated with the prisoner, Loki went so far as to send Dwarves instead to tend this one. Old ones, gone deaf from long years in the sacred mines with their deep echoes. They didn't care about the politics here. They cared about the gold they were given in payment, gold that would be carried home to create beautiful, intricate things that defied comprehension.

The silence kept the prisoner just as sharp, however. Heimdall was already on his feet as Loki passed into the hall, those bright, undimmed eyes seeing him, seeing him full. Seeing everything.

Loki pushed back the king's golden hood, an acknowledgement of the rain still spilling outside, and let Heimdall see his face just like anyone else might, the pale, drawn lines of his cheeks, and his green-grey eyes that stared back hollowly.

Heimdall laughed by way of sardonic greeting. "The food has been particularly shit of late, Prince Loki."

"Has it?" Loki arched an eyebrow, ignoring the carefully deliberate choices the man always used to address him. Food problems were not by his command, if the complaints were true. "Do you angle for sympathy now?"

"I don't give a damn about your sympathy. I do give a damn about the weevils in the bread they give me. I can see them in the pots of flour they deign to use, growing, wriggling, laying their eggs. They're going to be particularly bad soon. I think I will try a bread-free diet for a while. They'll give me the greens instead, and that's fine. It will keep me just as strong, my prince." He grinned at the tired face on the other side of the cage, not at all pleasantly. "Are you even aware of that? They're taking shortcuts in the prison kitchens, because they think the king doesn't know and doesn't care. That's true, is it not?"

He felt the skin of his face pull tight, white hot.

"You know nothing of what's going on in your own stolen palace, while the kingdom entire slowly begins to slip out of the grasp of your fingers. Is all this what you wanted, Loki?"

He slapped at the cold iron bars, the first line of defense holding the watchman in. Beyond them gleamed the familiar gold lattice. Heimdall didn't flinch, nor blink when Loki spoke in an even, controlled voice. "Lord Eirund. Northwest of the city. Has a matter with a Vanaheim clan, out by Hogun's village."

"I'm aware of the place." Heimdall crossed his arms and settled himself comfortably on the stool near Loki. He watched, and said nothing more.

Loki licked his lips, hiding his growing fury. "What are they not telling me? What's Eirund's obsession with this land deal that he masks it all with his pious concerns over some little relationship that doesn't even involve him directly?"

Heimdall stared down at him, a thin smile playing at the corner of his lips.

"Fine, I can make my own judgement based on what's given to me and no more, and everyone will be miserable over it, and you can sit here and squat in noble protest and contribute your part to my 'disaster.'" Loki spat the words. "Would that content you? Is that what you would like?"

"I'd like fewer weevils in my bedamned food, if that wasn't rhetorical."

Loki snorted and looked away. Then he looked back, further annoyed. "They're given better supplies than that."

"So they are."

Theft, then. Ordinary greed, a thing he would have thought left to smaller mortals, not the staff of kings in a realm of plenty. But no, it was a universal flaw in men. Loki rolled his eyes. Heimdall was telling the truth. Of course he was. "There will be fewer weevils in the bedamned food in the days to come."

"I'd ask you to swear an oath, but I'm just as apt to tell you where to stick that oath, my prince."

Loki laughed, low and bitter. There was little else he could do to torment Heimdall, short of murder. He'd started to take the hateful banter as almost comforting, the closest thing he'd had to ordinary conversation in months, so instead he bargained with easing what he could for his enemy. "I've been a prisoner before, and let's leave aside as obvious just how much you'd love to see that come around again. If not worse fates for me. There _will_ be fewer weevils, if for no other selfish reason than that I would not do such a thing to myself." And maybe send around a few bruised skulls, for betraying a given duty within the palace.

Heimdall studied him beneath his lengthening hair, woven taut in braids and dreads, his eyes gleaming and full of the deep light of the galaxy. "Lord Eirund stands to gain from that parcel of the lady's land more than most realize, though he thinks he knows its secret alone. It's verdant, lush, a pretty piece. But it's what's under it that's the real prize. There's a vein of ore buried there, something that would give him weight with merchanters and particularly Nidavellir smiths. He plays the game right, takes it under his wing, he's a much richer man. One that can buy his way into the higher nobility and all that entails, so he plays for the king's favor now, over this, to shore his claim over what he thinks he's found."

Loki snorted, knowing he hadn't actually won anything. In his own way, Heimdall was still serving the good of the kingdom - not him. He was not naive enough to think anything else. "But foolish enough to have left trails, spoken of it in too many conversations, that even kept here you've seen what he's about."

"As you say. My prince." Heimdall smirked.

He thought it over. Eirund didn't actually care about the lady's newborn love with some warrior. He cared that it tossed apart an arrangement his own cousin had with the lady, an arrangement that would eventually, played right, put the land she held under his own command, and he had been relying on that arrangement for several decades now. Betting all his business and credit on it.

With the king believing by the paperwork that he and his cousin were the wronged party in an otherwise minor fracas, the 'easiest' option the king would have then would be to simply free all parties from the previous obligation… and give the land to Eirund's family as a peace offering. Such was exactly what Eirund had been angling for in the throne room. The papers showed that as well. If the king felt any sympathy, the girl and her lover would still have quite a dowry and a pleasant, royal-blessed wedding - but not the land with its valuable secret, something that could sustain entire new generations. "How ridiculous this all is."

"I think those very words every day. My prince."

Loki rolled his eyes at Heimdall again. "Tonight you'll be fed from what's made for the king's own hall. And tomorrow, no damned weevils."

"Don't overdo yourself. My prince." Heimdall settled back, visibly amused at the tidbit he was being granted.

"If I were to overdo myself, I'd let you out to come and stab me in the back." He smiled back, fangy and for a moment full of the strength of all his own hot old annoyances. "But neither of us are foolish enough to expect that."

Heimdall's expression turned serious, assessing him in new and chilly silence. Loki didn't like the clarity there, never loved the way the man looked through him. He could not hide everything he wanted, not from those unnatural eyes. He turned away, pausing for a second at the sound of Asgard's watchman shifting his boots. "You do not see what I see," said Heimdall.

Loki glanced back in time to see an new and viciously unfriendly smile begin to fill Heimdall's brown face, turning the words into a threat, a weaponized and perfectly vague warning. He decided to leave the man with his own. He put a sneer in his voice, but kept his back to Heimdall as he left the buried prison in a rush of brown and gold robes, the mask returned to his face and voice. "From here, I suppose you can do nothing about any of it. You can sit there. And _watch_."

. . .

The 'king' dined alone that night. No courtiers, no supplicants, no advisors, no godsdamned lords attempting to curry favor on behalf of their own futures. Two guards at the outer entry to the small and private hall, no servants. Loki allowed them to set the table, commanded one to take a platter down to the prison as he'd promised, and then sent them out as well. It wasn't peace, but at least it was quiet.

It further allowed no one to see him not eating much of the finely prepared food that covered the table. He looked at the table runner, saw no other hands resting atop it like his, fumbling with silverware and telling each other stories. They were all gone. He saw the ghosts that replaced them, however. Frigga at the far end, facing the true Odin where he sat now, often with that little smile of hers. Down by her, on the left, that's where he would have sat as a little boy. Kicking just as young Thor under the table whenever he tried to belch as the men did. Frigga's own leg eventually putting a stop to the underground fray before Thor flung a piece of fruit at him in revenge. The fidgeting. The handmaidens and the staff trying to manage the sanity of the table by fluttering around and tending to what they could. Odin droning on about whatever political matter that currently needed his one wise eye.

Loki put his fork down, giving up and putting his still-masked face in his gnarled old hands. His belly was empty, but his mind filled itself thick and bloated with the past. All those family gatherings in this room. All the whispers and the fights and the laughter. There was nothing here now but silence.

Nothing here but him.

" _What have I done?_ " The whisper that escaped him went unheard, even by himself.

When he took his hands away from his face, the past was still there to judge him.

. . .

 _Ago_ ~

Thor paced furiously back and forth through the small family hall, never taking his eyes off the grand dining table in the center of it. The air seemed to crackle around him as he moved. On the brocade runner that bore the heraldry of their house, lay a corpse still wrapped in a coarsely woven shroud. It was stained through where the magicked arrows had done their fatal work. Meat of a gruesome kind lay where fine birds and breads ought, but he was clearly not their evening's supper. Barely restrained fury rattled through Thor's voice, not yet regarded by all as a man grown but already a warrior in his own right. "A message requires an answer!"

"Silence is an answer," said Odin, seated at the head of the table. The head of the corpse lay in his direction, and he regarded its linen crown with an untroubled look. "Sometimes it is the most wise answer."

"Karnilla will fill that silence with more corpses, Father." Thor paused in his stride to stare at the king with blue-flame eyes. "These are only her first. This poor one, and the twenty in the grass waiting outside to be made sacred and sent to the stars for their rest!"

"There will be more, yes." Frigga sounded as calm as Odin from where she stood, her hands hung together and her fingers interlaced before the blue silk of her gown. "She's testing us, Thor. Plying us to see where we will set the boundaries, and then she knows what first she must overcome. She has the opening move, and it's best to respond with a defense forged from wisdom."

"I have in mind a defense! A fine and strong one, a way to repel anyone that thinks our people are her bait and her sacrifice!" Thor turned fast on her, his long blond braids snapping in the still air of the feast hall. She looked back at him, soft and disapproving, and he didn't seem to notice.

Loki shifted on the low step where he sat, but said nothing either way. Instead he watched a little line of cold blood seep from underneath the corpse, staining the brocade runner a new shade of darker red. Not the first corpse he'd seen, not by far. It still took his mind away from supper. He could understand Thor's fury, but Frigga was right. As well the king, by his reckoning. Too quick a response, and it would tell Karnilla all the things about them that she wanted to know. Revenge was a trap that most often caught the vengeful instead. It might snare Thor first, if he got his way.

It was not Loki's way, however, to get in the middle of a good family fight. He had more regard for his own skin than that.

Motion caught his eye, the handmaidens at Frigga's side dipping further into the room in place of the night's servants. They were usually more used to family strife, so Frigga often deployed them to be a cushion between the family and the rest of the staff. Brigida moved to tend to the king's goblet with a practiced hand, another girl went to offer Thor one as a way of making peace. Helena couldn't take her eyes off the corpse as she passed by it to approach the prince, her skin paler than usual. The youngest one, Kara, swept Loki's way, and with a curtsy at his nod she brought him a glass of wine. No ripples in the red liquid as he reached to take it, the hand that held the gold vessel was steady.

He glanced up at the girl, seeing something much like Frigga's pragmatic serenity masked there. Vaguely interesting, that. The staff were terrified in the wake of the occasional family rage, the handmaidens usually understandably tense, but not this one. Kara looked primly away before he could study her face any further and returned to her place at Frigga's side in silence.

Meanwhile, Thor took his goblet by virtue of being polite, then all but threw it back onto the table. Wine splashed, adding its own color to the already ruined brocade. Helena locked eyes with elder Brigida and then hurried back into place behind the queen, her own fingers trembling. Approaching Thor in the throes of his immature rages was like being under a black cloud whose lightning often struck too close.

"Enough," said Odin. One word, in it a warning of his own. He drank the wine given to him, then regarded his angry son with a cock of his head and a stare from that one good eye. "Sit down."

"At that table, carrying that bitch's bewitched warning?"

Frigga stiffened at his tone, and even Loki couldn't stop a displeased quirk at the corner of his mouth. Too much like his forefathers sometimes, those old warriors that legend said might have secretly been berserkers. When the two brothers once played together in the fields as young boys, the enemies Thor chose for them to conquer were all too often base demons and Helbeasts and witches. Now Thor had finally found a real one to hate, forgetting for a moment that the reflection of Karnilla's forbidden black magic was found twice in the very room he stormed through. "Thor."

The coldness in Frigga's tone stopped him, and Thor blanched, realizing what he'd done. It was Odin's turn to lean back, quiet, glancing at his wife and his other son. This fight was no longer entirely up to him to halt. "Mother."

"Do you forget your lessons so easily, my son? What that sort of simple hate can foster in you?"

Thor reddened, as if she slapped him. In a way, that was exactly what she'd done. His first response was to cover himself, distract from what he'd said. "Would you try to defend _Karnilla_ of all peo-"

"No." A small sound, like a knife. "You would distill her into nothing more than a simple word - witch, or its worse, more slanderous cousin that you say so easily - and you will let yourself forget what she is. That's a weapon in her hand, too. Make of her a little thing, easy to hate, and you will miss all her blades until they strike you in the throat. She is a sorceress, Thor. Like me. A master of magic, like what your brother learns at my side. But that is not _all_ that she is. She is your enemy. Focus on that, and not your hate."

"You make it sound like I ought to respect her!"

Odin stirred. "Respecting your enemy is far from a weakness, my son. A moment of understanding can become your greatest tool. Hating your enemy is easy and gains you little. A shred of empathy can disarm them. Understanding a foe - that can _destroy_ them."

Frigga glanced at Odin, deliberately unreadable. Loki knew there was the scar of some old fight in that look, but there was a story to it he'd never been given outright. He knew better than to ask. She took her turn to speak. "The war that comes will not take the shape of what we've come to expect, my son. It will be masked in what you _think_ war is - and that's the outline of the first trap she'll lay for you and our greatest warriors personally."

Odin nodded.

Thor shook his head, denying her wisdom. "So we cut through it, cut through all the illusions and the nonsense and go direct for her throat! Now, before she digs in!"

Loki couldn't help himself. The tactical error was too grossly obvious. "And you think she's just blithely going to leave that throat open for you? Lay there like a willing barmaid and let you have at her?"

Thor stared at him next. It was hard to not flinch under the heat in that gaze. Loki made himself not waver, not an inch.

Frigga stepped forward, stopping this new front of battle before it could catch fire. "She is _already_ dug in, Thor. What we need to learn is how far her roots have grown. And I am afraid in the time she's had, they've gone deep indeed."

Thor opened his mouth, then closed it again. Defying Odin's order, he bowed to both his parents, turned on his heel, and left the room in the rush of his blood-red cloak.

"He's going to do something stupid," said Loki in the quiet after. "Can time the sunrises to come by it."

"Be silent," said Odin, shifting in his chair. The words came out more gruff than he possibly intended, though Loki still bristled sharp under his black silks. Frigga looked at her husband, her hands snapping once at him in exasperation. Odin waved himself off with a shake of his head, the most he would give by way of apology. "We are all now weary with this matter. Come, bring the Valkyries in for our dead soldier, and the servants. Let them tend us. We'll dine tonight without Thor - he can cool his head where he likes."

Loki stood, moving with calm and elegant grace and flowing into a clean bow. He let no trace of his anger with his father seep into his face. "I think I might take my supper privately tonight as well, Your Majesties. Let there be a little more peace for us all." He tilted his head politely towards Frigga and her maids and left, not waiting for permission, not acknowledging the taut expression on the Queen's face. His own personal revolt.

The silence followed him down the hall. Fine enough for him. He was indeed weary with the night's central matter - and all the other matters running just underneath it, that black little constant stream.


	4. Chapter 4

4.

. . .

Prince Loki left the empty plates aside to be taken later, his arms crossed atop the smooth marble of his open window and the long black hair across his brow catching the gentle evening breeze. He knew if he waited and watched a little longer, he'd see Thor finally give in to all his urges and stride out from the palace gates down into the city streets. Loki hadn't decided yet if he'd stalk him. He could, some nights, not only to keep watch over his brother when he'd got his nose set just so, but to see if he would continue to go uncaught at it. Thor was a good tracker and field soldier in his own right already, and Loki had more than a few close scrapes playing his little games in Thor's taller shadow. It kept his own skills sharper yet.

But he also had his suspicions about what sort of comfort Thor might choose to seek in the city tonight, not only ale and the company of his warrior friends in the nearby taverns, but warmer company yet, and there were certain things his brother did that Loki didn't take much pleasure in overhearing.

Certainly Loki would pitch nine hells worth of a fit if he'd caught Thor doing the same to him, so he couldn't lay claim to much hypocrisy in that regard. He knuckled his hand, resting his chin atop it, and considered the growing threat of the enemy sorceress. Nornheim, her current and previous target, was already a 'realm,' inasmuch as it counted as one of the Nine. But unlike Alfheim and Vanaheim, it didn't hold its own leadership on Odin's council. And as a part of it touched upon Asgard itself, its visible boundary but miles away and across a line of rivers and fields, it was often regarded as more of a strong fiefdom than a semi-independent realm.

Karnilla wanted more than that. She wanted to give it a Queen, make of it not just the place where seers slept and prophecies gathered, but a true realm of magic, one that could devour what even the Elves were capable of. What Vanaheim's gentler healers and sorceresses could be - where Karnilla herself had been born, he'd been told.

Some of that seemed logical. Understandable, even. Magic in the Nine long held a shaky and untrustworthy place. Loki knew that deeply, personally. And that uneasiness drew allies to Karnilla almost effortlessly, people that wanted a place to simply exist without being hated.

That was where Frigga's empathy had helped stop the last war. It had been her effort to bring magic back into the daylight, make it not something to mindlessly fear. Married a prince destined to be king, and brought her healers to the palace to tend not only her own family, but anyone in the realm that needed it and could call for aid. Magic was more normal now, wed to the almost invisible technologies that grew stronger yet under the family's care. But it was also still easily feared, and in the crack of those doubts, Karnilla grew powerful again.

Karnilla _liked_ to be feared, however. That was where her own flaws started. The first sign that what she considered a realm of magic, was also destined to be a realm of subtle darknesses.

Loki frowned, almost missing the shadow in the gardens far below. There he was. Thor slipped from the dark lee of one tree to another, making his way towards the gate where he'd be home free. Odin's personal word might keep him inside, but the guards at the front would do what the prince told them. He considered one more time. Follow, or let him be?

He leaned back in his little chaise that was formed around the inside of that stone ledge, then chose. A rustle at the door, almost on cue, and with a flick of his hand he allowed one of the palace staff to take the remnants of his dinner away. He remained still, watching the shadow disappear into the city and then from his view.

When Thor was gone, Loki wondered if he might not slip out for similar reasons of his own. Then he decided against it. There was a new treatise he'd found on layering visual illusions with the other senses. That struck him as more soothing to his mind, at least for now. He would try to not think too much on Odin's casual dismissal of him, another ordinary moment in an extraordinary family.

He slept there, leaned against the balcony, the book under his hand. And when he dreamed, he dreamed of kings.

. . .

Dressed and masked as the All-Father, Loki glowered at the crowd arranged in the greater hall of the palace, an expression that fit old Odin perfectly and was, for once, an honest expression of what he himself felt underneath. Eirund held forth at the far end of the banquet in a gaggle of his friends and allies, and Loki noted who he suspected was genuine and who was merely some sycophant looking for a come-up on whatever they sensed in the eager young man. Usually he could tell just by the laughter, that undertone of bell-like earnestness, that clank of a forced chuckle. The high chair he sat in kept him too far away to hear properly.

He chuckled through his false beard at the bitter joke hidden in that, a sound kept to himself by virtue of that same disconnect between him and the noble crowd.

Regardless, Eirund's nonsense wasn't the entire reason for why he found the gleaming elegance of the grand banquet so dull and unappealing that eve. He tracked the source of his worming gut around the far ring of the room, the visiting Prince Thor draped in a soft red cloak with Sif trailing not far behind, the prince making all feel welcome under the soft drape of the castle's banners.

Watching his brother kneel before him didn't grant pleasure any longer. Instead he found his fingers gnarling and plucking at the carved edges of his seat, an old man's fussiness and constant discomfort. That weakness sold the illusion better than he could have ever prayed, even as his paranoia grew that Thor would look up and somehow see _his_ eyes behind Odin's tired one.

Loki watched Thor make his way towards that irritating little gaggle, the laughter growing louder as fresh goblets were passed around by the staff at a beckon and a command. The sight of Eirund, bright and full of life, and confident in his plans began to infuriate him. There was selfishness running all through the lord's petty play, and abruptly another crack of bitter laughter filtered through his beard at his thoughts. Loud enough that one of the men serving the table stole a glance at him, worried.

Irony, all of it. Irony that he sat there in judgement over a small and selfish man, irony that he had stolen what he thought he wanted, and now all they saw was an old man that once could have said he had everything. Before Loki had taken it all and turned it into nothing.

Weariness stole over him, the sound of the night's festivity rattling through the halls becoming a distant echo, like the whisper of pages in a decaying book. Loki wasn't sure if he was actually wearing an illusion anymore. He looked down at his old and gnarled hands, unconvinced either way at first.

Then he wondered if perhaps he was indeed as dead as he'd tried to become so many times, and he was the ghost here. The haunts he thought he saw when the hours trailed on too late, slipping through from a finer reality where they still danced and lived and laughed, and he was trapped in the dark just out of reach and haunting them instead.

Under the beard, he licked his lips and then grit his teeth, pulling himself back together into the now. Fighting to remember that he was Loki, victorious on his throne, not Odin, not dead. It would not do to go mad again. Particularly not in the middle of a feast, where lords waited for his decisions.

Motion caught his eye, that fine red cloak on the approach back towards him, and he let his hands wring together, fussy, but not quite like the way he once picked and plucked. Mother's habit, living on within him.

Thor dropped into a chair nearby, close enough that the two could speak casually, as family might. "Eirund's a bit of a twit, isn't he," he said, low enough to cut any of the staff out of hearing.

'Odin' rolled his one good eye over to the prince, grim and barely amused. "A twit with delusions of much more. Wearisome antics."

"Mm." Thor turned to look at the gaggle, grinning and lifting his goblet to Eirund as if he weren't just shit-talking him behind his back. "There's something odd about him. Never used to come 'round the palace so much, he was better with his horses. I know I'm not around as much, but I don't feel that's changed. Now he's, what, looking towards the builders and architects we have in the south of the city. What's he playing at, Father?"

The king looked away, annoyed and burying everything else he felt down deep. A morass of confusion left behind, a desire of some kind whose shape Loki didn't want to know. "He's attempting to unsnarl some little issue of his."

"Usually leads to a bigger snarl than what he started with, going round with a smirking face like that."

True enough. 'Odin' went on to grudgingly tell Thor what was going on, the broad strokes at least, and not hinting too closely at how he'd found some of his information. No surprise threat waiting for him there, a king was expected to know much and from many sources. Loki hated the talking, the comfort he found in it. His fingers itched and wanted to peel at each other.

Thor's brow furrowed in, his disappointment plain. "Small and petty. I'd expect better from one of our lords."

"Small and petty and effective. It's very simple to give him what he wants and wash my hands of it, but is that fair?" 'Odin' snorted. "Not to the young couple, I think, knowing what I know and what Eirund knows. But that is what the papers suggest ought to be done, and the advisors, and the books of old. The law, young prince, is on the bastard's side."

"Must law stand as the unbroken rule when the law is known to the judge to be unfair?" Thor frowned, watching the gaggle flow and consume more of the merriment at the far side of the room. "That's when kings _must_ come in, I think. The books might say one thing, but a living mind should say another."

'Odin' snorted, irritated to his bones and unable to do anything but admit even to himself that what Thor said was true. "The little lordling won't like anything but the good law, however."

"To Hel with him. He knows what he's playing at, and he ought to damn well know the stakes. He built himself up on unstable ground. We do not do arranged marriages in Asgard any longer, and the girl was young when she accepted his cousin's hand. Things change. Life changes us." Thor shrugged it off. "The land is hers, and the warrior is hers, and the cousin is not, and Eirund can suck on the arse of a unhealthy bilgesnipe for all I care of him. The 'law,' such as it may be worded here, would be unfair to her most of all. She has not been given a chance to defend herself, nor even know she is under assault."

'Odin' leaned back, silent and contemplative at first. "And still, the boy lord would rage. At us, at his cousin's lost maid, at the failure of his ploy. Such things come to fester, in time. They make sane men into maddened enemy." Reality doubled in front of his face. He shook his head once, sharp.

"The responsibility for his actions will then lay on him and no one else." Thor arched an eyebrow. "I make a suggestion. Offer him a gift, Father, an assessment of the land so that there could be a different reparation made to him for the sake of the lady's future. And when he politely refuses, because he will be a coward who won't want his game brought to light, shrug and give him a scrap of some finery that might shut him up and send him on his way. As for the girl? Assess the land anyway to ward her against further exploitation, and grant her a fine hall for her marriage ceremony."

How simple was that? Crude, cutting through the heart of the legal issues Eirund hid himself behind, but _fair_ , and plain enough to gleam transparent under the light. Loki's hands wrapped around the edges of his chair, the knuckles going cold and bone white. Hate suffused him, mindless fury, burning agony, the realization that the best solution here truly _was_ that simple. No grand riddle and its solution was required from him. The answer he needed came easily from without, from a brother that he could once rely on to be a fool, if a well-meaning one.

Thor noted his silence, looking at him with the careful concern the young often gave the old. "Father?"

Air rattled into his throat. For a moment, the temptation was alive before his eyes like a physical thing. Let Eirund have his way, dash them all, let an old king's bitterness ruin yet more lives. Odin himself had done so more than once, when he forgot or was too angry to be fair.

But that was not the king _he_ had wanted to be, once. The air stuck fast in Loki's throat, threatening to choke him. What was he instead?

Loki forced the air back out from behind his teeth, wrestling it into words, letting the ghosts speak them for him instead. "That… is interesting advice. It is a bit simple, young Thor, but there is brute wisdom behind it." Trying to not shake, he lifted himself out of the heavy chair, waving off Thor's offer of a helping hand while trying to not bray in wild laughter at the thought that he might need such support. Knowing and hating that he did. He stood, not quite quivering, the drape of heavy robes making the king look as stoic as ever. "I will give them my word on the morrow, and it may well be that my word will bear no small resemblance to yours."

"Of course, Father. Do you want company to your quarters?"

"No." He said it gruffly, hiding the bile. The single word was perfectly Odin's. "I am only weary. Let them enjoy their revels for now, Thor. I leave the hall to your care this night."

"Rest well, Father." Thor bowed low as he left, and Loki tried to not laugh and careen into the walls as he left at the sight of the act, the young prince centered regally in the golden hall. Right where he was supposed to be.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

. . .

 _Ago_ ~

Prince Loki pulled the black leather riding gloves from his hands, barely hearing them snap in the air as he assessed the growing crowd outside the sealed palace gates. They looked frightened and weary. Some had blood on their faces. Not something he'd ever seen this way, not so close to home. He turned his head slightly away from them at the sound of footsteps fast on the approach, seeing the healer Eir on the run towards him. He nodded in brisk greeting to the queen's fast friend. "I came back from my ride as soon as I heard the horns. What is this?"

"Refugees, my prince." Eir pulled herself together, the slightest bit wild-eyed but otherwise wholly in control. Other healers were tumbling out the door where she'd come from. She was a stoic in most things, reliable and sturdy, but field actions brought out the whirlwind in her. Then she was a mobile terror, high-strung and perfectionist. He realized Karnilla's distant, slow war was at last drawing tight enough now to touch, despite Odin's order to keep the family itself away from its front lines. An order that Loki knew Thor was ignoring and had been for at least two years. "Nigh two hundred of them today. I must needs sort them out, assess their health… the king's allowed me the open field of our gate for triage, and the queen says I might ask thee for help."

He wasn't a particularly good healer, but he also knew that wasn't what she was asking for. A triage clerk, an organizer, and a royal face that held command - _that_ he could do here, valuably. Loki stuffed his gloves into his belt, looking around for someone he could ask to bring him ink and a sheaf of paper. There was a servant at the side door, wide-eyed and frightened by the noisy crowd that was even more frightened than he, and he beckoned to the boy regardless. "You've got it, lady Eir."

. . .

Nigh two hundred turned out, by Loki's first and also correct estimation, to be one hundred and eighty-three frightened people that lived along the very fringes of Nornheim. That made them witnesses to the first new frenzied battles Karnilla was giving their warriors, and also that boundary gave them a chance to flee its wildfire while they could. Loki passed up and down the neatly-organized rows, double-checking his work and doing the deeper investigation of establishing identities and what supplies he needed to arrange to make them individually comfortable until they could be temporarily homed.

Wails interrupted him as he was soothing a lone mother and her small child, her husband still at the front. He turned his head to see a pair of sisters clutching at each other, freshly frightened into tears by the healers working right by them. They themselves were fine, his notes already marked them as minor nobility and thus placed a little closer to the palace by way of a visual note for himself, but that also put them close to the emergency triage.

Eir ducked into the healer's fray from where she'd been finishing with another patient, her hands immediately slick with new blood. This was a warrior who'd gone with the refugees to protect them on their way to safe territory, though he was already badly injured himself. A way for a man of Asgard to save face before their traditions, even though those same traditions suggested not very subtly that he should have died mid-battle instead.

Loki made a face at that, then watched the darker haired noble girl bury her face in the golden braids of her sister as Eir began to weave healing magic in the air. Pretty girls. Clearly a touch protected, shocked now at beholding the first strike of a battle. Thor's friend Sif would have little time for them, and Frigga sympathetic if privately weary, but not all women could be either of them. Some people held together best they could. Sometimes that best was a bare thread to cling to, when there were hard times.

Loki glanced at his notes to remind himself who they were, looking around now and then to see if they were disrupting anyone else. Wouldn't do for them to start a panic among the injured. Lorelei, the dark haired one. And Amora, the elder. He didn't know them, and as far as he knew, they had scarcely ever visited the city before.

Loki folded his notes shut and placed his hand on the head of the little boy that he still knelt next to. "You're going to be just fine. You're safe now, right?" A small smile found an answer from the boy, and a wider, if still shellshocked one from the mother. Then he cut through a few rows to the ladies, coming down on one knee silently as they continued to sniff. "You're worried for the warrior there?"

"Oh, my gods." The blonde one, Amora, looked up from where she'd been bent over and gently stroking her sister's dark hair. "He was so kind to us all, hiding that wound as he kept us moving through the coming dawn. He saved us, he truly did. I didn't know how badly he was hurt!" She bit her lip, looking at him through eyes that were clearly blurred from tears. "Will he be well? Will he live?"

"I don't know," said Loki, forced to be honest. "This is the hard part of triage. If they can stabilize him now and then get him inside to the medical bays and the soul forge, it will look very good. But first…" He let his voice trail off, the sounds of healers muttering fast and profanely to each other replacing him. Ladylike coquettishness had no place in a healer's mouth on a busy field. He'd learned some of his best coarse language from Eir herself, on those Muspelheim stones then fraught with demons. No few of those words could scorch the tongue. "We can hope so," he finished. "We may ask the gods for their favor."

"And I do sir." Amora blinked away a handful of her tears and wiped the sleeve of her torn green dress across her eyes. She blinked again as she looked at him again, seeing him clear this time. "Oh, gods again," she said, startled enough to miss her courtesies at first.

Lorelei looked up, her round face with wide eyes and a trembling lip seeing Loki with the same shock. "Your Majesty?"

He could not hold back the laugh that fell from him with rare lightness as her sister gently pinched her at the overdone address. " _Highness_ , little sister. He's not the king." Amora looked up, a feeble but real smile on her face. "I have seen him before, to my blessing. Majestic is our All-Father, my lord, but a touch older than thee."

"Just a touch." Loki tapped his old-fashioned feather pen against his notes. "I know you've had a terrible ordeal, but you must know you're safe now, within these gates. And that you care so much for the wounded who helped, you have my gratitude on their behalf. But please, think of their care alone, and don't share with them overmuch your fright. It will help ease the others, that strength, if you can muster it."

Amora looked stricken, a shocked light sparking alive in those green eyes, and he immediately wondered if there'd been an even gentler way to put it. "Your Highness, in such regard I thought of no one but myself!" She inhaled a breath and put a hand out towards him palm up, as if supplicating. As she did so, she seemed to calm herself. "Of course, my lord. Of course. And if there is anything we can do to help our people further, please…" She shook her head, her brows drawing in defiantly. "Our nobler kin is silent and our own father will say near as little, not wanting to draw an eye to where they all are caught in this conflict. But my sister and I will give everything, if we can but know it will help save another."

Lorelei reached up, sharing her hand in supplication by placing it atop her sister's. Charmed despite himself, Loki took their joined hands with one of his for just a moment, bowing his head politely. They might do well helping to keep the refugees organized in the next dawn, once the first orders of their bloody business was done. He noted that idea dutifully in the back of his mind, then took his hand away with another informal bow and moved on.

. . .

Loki threw the damp towel he'd used on his hair into the pile with the rest as he finished rising from the private bather's pool next to the king's chambers, remembering an age where he would have been comfortable having someone else standing by to offer him a robe or a warmer towel, or really, just to have the presence of another person. As the phantom he was forced to be, he needed to be more self-reliant than ever. And continually find new explanations for why the All-Father wanted such deepened privacy.

Grief worked well. But grief would not work forever. He had stopped wondering aloud how long he was going to win at playing this game of his, though the question still nagged the back of his mind.

He plucked up his robe from where he'd draped it across a chair, finding it cooled from the night's breeze. Loki sighed and slipped his naked form into it anyway, deciding he wouldn't spare the energy to warm it by magic. The skin along the backs of his arms prickled at the chill. The illusions he wore so much of the day were too intricate now to allow him much other use for his energies. If he pushed, his body would take the brunt of it. That would hasten the answer to quite a number of his questions. Magic was not given freely.

The black old thoughts came to him as he stepped away from the puddle that had formed under his feet, thin rivulets of water still dripping down his bare calves - if he were carrying that _jotun_ secret behind his grey-green eyes, why did he mislike the damned chill so much? Old habit counted, by way of one possible answer, and perhaps he turned out he was even a freak of a damned Frost Giant.

He tied the silken robe around himself, knotting the belt at his slim waist, slimmer now than he'd ever been, with far more viciousness than necessary. Thor's growth and wisdom still had him upset, not least of all with himself. But it was a familiar enough anger that it might help coax him into sleep.

To hells with the gowns and the curtains. Hell with the papers he still ought look over, and the candles, and all of it he'd asked for, all what he'd taken. He curled up atop the thick covers of Odin's bed like he did when he was a child, and for once, drugged by his hates, drained by his own magic, and weighed down by the thought of the looming face of his brother, he passed out dreamlessly.

. . .

Loki snapped awake, but kept his eyes shut and his breathing just as regular as a moment before. Trained habit from years sleeping in enemy territories, and he was smart enough to think of Odin's room as the same. The rest of his senses prickled; a different lick of air across a chest more bare than usual, the whisper of something that wasn't the wispy curtain, the even vaguer, almost psychic recognition of a _presence._ Someone was in the room with him. By the care, by the silence, it wasn't a servant or a guard.

The nape of his neck felt the shiver first, then the rest of his spine. Loki was curled around one of the thick, downy pillows, and under it was a blade just within reach of his fingers. He was never away from at least one. There were three more in range if he moved his arm, but he didn't budge. Not yet.

He cracked the eye mostly buried in the pillow just a sliver, the curve of his face hiding it from almost all easy view, and saw the very edge of a profile near the window. Someone smallish, a lithe figure, but not much more there for him to see. He studied the shapes anyway, teasing free what he could.

 _Armor. Leather, black, soft,_ he calculated, that cold feeling spreading and starting to squeeze his heart. _All black, possibly deep grey trim. Mask, wrapped fabric and more leather - wait, small motion. On their heels, light as crow feathers. Damn, they're going to be quick. But they haven't struck yet._

 _It's an assassin, and they haven't killed me yet._

His eye tried to flutter out of his control, full wakefulness telling him the answer to his question. Odin was the target. Not him. The figure was trying to puzzle this fresh mystery of theirs out. And just the knowledge of who was sleeping in this tower, really, could kill him deader than any blade.

 _Shit_.

His fingers curled around the hilt of the knife. Almost silent by his reckoning, and yet he knew his nails scraped the silk sheets, just barely.

The figure froze. Beneath the wrapped fabric of the mask, he thought or imagined he saw the gleam of an eye, its gaze flickering all along his form. _Now or never_ , he thought. _Fight or flight_.

Instinct and training took over for any bodily exhaustion. He slid upright in a single rush of motion, the blade at the ready in his hand, the robe whipping around him with a dip of his hip to confuse his own outline if they struck back.

The assassin dipped back just as smoothly, their arm wrapping around the side of the tall window in a hug, and they swung out into the night breeze with improbable silence.

He stood for a second, shocked. Logic said his assailant was now going to plunge to their death for their failure to strike while they could. Odin's private spire was the tallest in the palace, smooth gold along its outside wall, no handholds, nothing. It gave the king both safety and the luxury of that boldly open window with its rich curtains. But he didn't hear the rush of a body succumbing to mortal gravity.

 _Right. That's impossible._

The knife still in his hand, he crossed the room and leaned out over the balcony, aware that his neck could be in danger. He looked down first, and indeed there was no corpse dotting the ground far below. And then he looked left, at the black figure moving spider-like and fast away from his tower to the lower one next. Stunned, he realized they had _made_ handholds, not found any - some suctioned tool suitable enough for even near-frictionless gold. Not mundane work. Some magic or technology baked into it. That was a specialist's device. He traced the path they seemed apt to take, towards another balcony, an empty one that led to a wing of the palace nearly as empty.

If they got away clean, his arse was still on the line. They had priceless information in knowing who slept in Odin's tower, and he had no idea if they had a network with which to sell it. He realized abruptly that he didn't know _anything_ about his attacker. They had all the advantage against him, a thing he hadn't had to face in months.

The cold gripped tight at his chest again and he looked around, picking out a plan. Pure folly to chase their route along the rooftops and gleaming towers. That balcony, then. There weren't many other avenues for his attacker to take. If he could get past his own damned guards to it.

He spun around and dug for Odin's thicker robe, grimacing as he thought. Magic, then. A little bit of costly invisibility, just to push him through the closest Einherjar. Worth it for this. Make his way through the secret passage to Frigga's as the first dogleg of his route, then down the stairs he could get to at midpoint and on after the shadow.


	6. Chapter 6

6.

. . .

Loki took the hallway corner towards a block of empty rooms in a dead run, a scrap of cheaply whispered magic telling him there were no guards in a thousand meters. In a sane situation, what he ought to do was run like merry blazes _towards_ the guards to notify them of someone who had successfully penetrated the finest palace in the Nine Realms, and whose security was no slouch when compared to much of the rest of the galaxy entire. The story of his life had gone well past sane a long, long time ago, and he fought to not laugh at the absurdity of his situation while padding barefoot, in a pair of layered robes and not much else, silently into the blackness of the guest wings.

If his attacker was anywhere, they would be here. Already, or very soon. He bared his teeth and glanced at a tall window, beyond which was the balcony he'd seen the shadow aiming for. If he ducked out, and they were almost there, they'd change course.

If they were here… he crept into the shadow of a statue near the doorway, knowing his cover was already blown, if that was the case.

His concerns turned out to be moot. A moment later, he saw the lighted rectangle of a door opening on the far side of the guest quarters, and a fast-moving shadow diving through it. Not a whisper of breeze had passed him, nothing.

"How the _Hel-_ " Loki cut himself off and moved after them. On his way he realized there had been a second balcony, out of the way enough to be missed on a glance. A much smaller one, with a window that as he rushed by, he could tell it had been swung open forcefully from outside. His chase hadn't mattered much to the shadow after all. They'd just bypassed him as well as they could and kept right on going.

Ice settled next to his tailbone, not slowing him as he followed. His assailant knew the palace layout intimately. _Far_ better than he could have guessed.

He kept trail through two more passages and a staircase leading down into livelier, riskier reaches of the palace, gasping for breath when he realized the night's watch was changing guard and if he stayed there too long, he would be caught out. He changed his route slightly to compensate. Then one more empty space waited for him, an abandoned room with an overgrown garden that connected it to other lower rooftops. He slammed his way in, ready to catch up to and stop that black figure.

The assassin hunkered on the far end of that garden, on the narrow railing that kept a visitor from the next drop, that shapeless black head cocking slightly at him. "Persistent," the figure said, muffled thoroughly enough by fabric and possibly something else, giving him almost no clue. "Where is Odin, then?"

Loki gasped for breath, staring at the figure, thinking. He could perhaps barely get across the garden fast enough to engage them, but for what? In the open air, he could see the rest of their weapons tinkling light and metal and deadly sharp at their waist. He was outmatched in terms of obvious tools, and still at a complete disadvantage unless he burned himself alight with magic. Lucky bastard, in his unlucky way, that he hadn't been the target they wanted. "Oh, now, hunter, that can't be all you want."

"Where is Odin? Is he alive? Did you slay him, prince?" The words were hissed this time. "Tell me that, and you'll sleep just fine this night. You look like you need it."

Loki swallowed, quickly looking for the trap that he knew had to be waiting here. Somewhere. Few in Asgard were that single-minded, and he needed more room to move. "And what about tomorrow's night? You've got a secret of mine. I've got a secret of yours. We have business, not a situation where you bark questions at me."

"Assurances are for the trustworthy. We're surely not that." The shadow stayed where they were, a gargoyle of indeterminate identity. He still failed to get a real idea of their profile. "We'll talk again. When I decide. Rest well, prince. While you can."

"Damn you," Loki spat, and he sped across the garden. Before he even passed the tall poppies, the figure fell back into the open air, graceful as a falcon on the dive. He saw for a split second the thin silver rope they were using to rappel down and away. By the time he'd gotten to where the shadow had stood, his hands finding the railing still warmed from the thin boots, they were gone.

He stared at the empty night, searching the stone walkways below, the other balconies. They were simply, utterly gone, clever enough to pick a multitude of back-up paths, and disappear down one… showily, even.

Loki shook his head, slumping against the rail and now more tired than ever. The chase cost him dear, with no profit earned for his efforts. He'd pay for it tomorrow, in full. Meanwhile, the knife dangled from his numbing fingers while he immediately went over the encounter in his mind a dozen times, though mostly he was delaying himself from having to make a trail all the way back past the damn guards to the royal tower that he called a lair.

He kept coming back to pick at the thorn that dug sharp into his back of his skull. How in hells had the would-be _assassin_ done it all, when he lived there and barely could?

. . .

 _Ago_ ~

Odin chose his moments when it came to dramatic display. He was not a humble man, but he knew the worth of a good show in his own way, and when it mattered most. Armor was a thing he never scrimped on, for he was often at the front of battle's charge and needed to be both safe and a beacon for others to be inspired by. Formal dress before his private court was typically an afterthought. He left it to others in the family to be the flashy ones.

Tonight was the rare exception. His illusory image stood tall within countless homes too far away to come and see the announcement for themselves at the steps of Asgard's palace. His king's robe and its pieces of ceremonial armor were not only gold, but sparked with crimson red and adorned with the rare sight of glinting sapphire and ruby and emerald chains of office. Priceless decorations older than than any living Aesir, and a signal that despite the war raging hot only miles away, they were to remember their own brightness and glory.

Odin stood tall before the opened double doors of his palace, his hands spread before the gates and his family arrayed behind him. Thousands knelt on the walkways and the fields, mothers gently holding their young children in front of them so they could see the All-Father for the first time with their own eyes. "For countless millennia, the royal house has stood watch over our Nine Realms as thy shield and thy guide. It is our family's honor to serve, and our responsibility to be with each and every one of you. Our blood may be shed as easily as any of yours on the sacred battlefield, the blood that names us your King and your All-Father.

"To remember these things, to keep them alive within us, we mark seasons and centuries as best we may, to remember what we owe. The coldest solstice has come and gone, and so has a long millennia and no few wars that marred it. War already marks our new era, it is true. But war cannot defeat us. We are Asgard! We are the children of such war, born strong from it!"

Cheers rose, a sea-swell of pride that washed over every inch of gold from one end of the city to the other. Buoyed by it, Odin lifted his bearded chin higher yet. "More importantly, _you_ are Asgard. Without our people to remind us of what we serve, we, the royal family, are nothing."

Behind him, as the cheers rose again, the two brothers bowed their head dutifully. Loki believed, of course, but he watched Thor's feet shift, impatient. It wasn't that Thor minded the festival season coming or disagreed with the meaning of the festival, Loki knew - it was that he'd had to slip back from where he'd been lurking among the war-bands, hunting 'witches,' in order to take his place at Father's side for the next several months.

Loki scraped over a black boot and ankled his brother once in the low calf to make him stop fidgeting, catching Frigga's unamused eye as he resumed his formal posture. Worth it. Thor stilled, squaring his shoulders and looking the proper stoic prince once again.

"The trees will change and spring will return. The war will burn on. We will maintain, and we will thrive. And so, to remind us, and to honor you, the Festival of Remembrance has come 'round again. Six months we grant it, to begin at dawn tomorrow, for meat and for mead and for merchants to be spread wide among the realm. And at the apex, the carnival that reminds us that we are in truth equals - the nine eves and the last midnight, where the palace is yours, the crowns are yours, and we, the royal family, are but shadows bound to our people."

Roars now, delighted and eager. Not a millennia since the last such revelry, but closer to three. Many had not been alive for the last. Odin himself had been a much younger man then, and king for scant centuries.

As the All-Father lowered his hands to the chaos of cheers and applause, the burning reds of sunset lit the palace from behind. Dragon's flames, a bard might call it, brought on by the words of a great king. Loki couldn't resist a quirk at the corner of his mouth at the theatricality of it, and how rare it was to see their King at the center of it all.

It would be up to him and Thor both to make a certain amount of appearances in the city, for morale, and to play up the central conceit of this particular fest as being equal to their people before Gods and Death Herself, and he realized he was actually looking forward to it. The previous festivals he'd experienced were often smaller things; the ends of war and a good trading season. The last absolute mayhem of a party had been when he was a child still, and he'd had to cover for yet more of his brother's foolishness.

This one, he might be able to enjoy simply as it was. When Odin turned, allowing them all to trail him inside, he found he was smiling.

. . .

He'd spied, but he still hadn't quite figured out what he was going to be walking into this morning. Loki stopped at the entry to the Queen's garden, observing the two handmaidens watching the seated one with a glower. He hadn't been able to overhear what was going on, not with the spells he thus far had at his disposal. He decided barging in like a bastard might get him somewhere, and curiosity couldn't talk him out of it.

"Look, I realize you've every right to attend the revels, but if you're going to be a bloody embarrassment about it, Kara, you ought consider carefully." Brigida sniffed, her and her snickering backup not yet aware they had an observer. "There'll be other festivals. Maybe you'll have stopped being half a barbarian by then."

Loki arched an eyebrow, watching Kara continue to silently work at her stitching. The silken ribbon found its place under her fingers deftly enough, hemmed in with a fine gold thread.

"You can ignore us all you like, but you know what I say is true. Girl, I don't even think you've been taught to dance yet. You've a curtsy or five, and your general lessons are up to date, and, very well, you can manage a platter in the high hall, but you're still barely in from the soggy winds." Brigida crossed her arms, Mette resting her chin on her taller shoulder with a grin. Loki leaned against the stone trellis, black against the noontime shadow. The queen waited for him in her rooms, up a few steps and within, and he knew he had only a few minutes to decide what he ought to do. "But those goaty feet of yours are going to fumble when it matters most, and I'm just trying to help you not embarrass yourself. I'm not trying to be cruel, you know."

"Oh, I'm certain of that," muttered Kara, still focused on her stitches as if they were all that mattered in the world. "You've been incredibly educational, Brigida, and I am so thankful for your long ministrations. You spend too much of your time on my faults."

"Are you trying to be sarcastic with me, girl?"

"Oh, dear me, hardly." The same gentle monotone. Loki's other eyebrow lifted up to match the first. "With you, I've learned more than I ever would from any simple book on manners."

Brigida eyed her suspiciously. "And what lessons mean the most to you, little barbarian?"

Kara secured her needle on the edge of a scrap cloth, tracing her fingertip across her work with a small nod of approval. "Well, I'm rather working on the details, Lady Brigida, but I think I've got down how to not grow up to be a complete bastard."

Mette gasped in a long, horrified breath at the sudden twist of insubordination. She did it again as Brigida started to lunge forward, her hand in the air like a snakebite.

"Ladies!" Loki gaily sung the single word into the air like a bardic verse entire, whipping into the garden like he hadn't just watched the entire showdown happen. The tableau froze, except for that rising hand that swiveled down to smooth a stray hair stuck to Brigida's forehead. "My Gods and stars above, what a _lovely_ afternoon this looks to be!"

"Your Highness," said the pair, their combined tone a titch more flat than usual. Loki pretended he had no idea they were less than enthused to see him, although the grin stuck on his face threatened to give him away.

Kara rose with a simple curtsy, allowed to be silent in her position as the junior handmaiden.

Loki clapped his hands together once as he strode into their midst, looking at each of them in turn. Then a look of earnest concern crossed his face. "Did I interrupt something? I thought I heard merry talking."

"Of course not, my lord." Mette gathered her skirts with a bob of her head, playing coverup. "Only, well, discussing preparations for the revelry days ahead."

"Certainly!" He beamed, deeply enjoying the pair's attempts to hide their discomfort. He could sense Kara watching him, and he turned to her with the same light smile. "Why, half a dozen merchant carts are already pulled into the streets in front of the palace, two from Alfheim and one not even from the Nine entire."

"Not even from the Nine, Your Highness?" She clasped her hands together with a tilt of her head, playing along better than the elder girls did. "Now that's a rare thing."

"The Dwarves begged it, some spacer traders who work in rare ores. We thus allow a few out from the deep, a morbid little place for miners where they toil in the skull of some beast of old." Loki shrugged, seeming to forget the detail and already visibly moving on. A mayfly enjoying his few hours, he pretended to be. "Oh, and how was that book you were reading? The lore from a while ago?" He looked up at the sky, squinting. "Has it really been a couple of years? I should have asked sooner. Oh, well."

Kara blinked at the abrupt segue. "Quite good, Your Highness. And I most appreciate the suggestion you made at the time. I believe I've worked my way through most of Gaimmena and his contemporaries since."

"Excellent." Loki turned back to Brigida, just as abrupt. "Ah. And before I forget, it's my duty to be certain everyone is reminded of the few rules of the festivity. Since you were discussing preparations, naturally. And the dominant rule is, there are indeed scarce few rules as the Nine Day Feast approaches, save that all are welcome. Even these odd creatures from deep space, and the drunkest Dwarves, and, well." He chuckled. "Everyone except me, as it happens!"

He watched the two girls' expressions, adding the _coup de grace_. "And my good brother Thor, of course."

The pair looked even more somber. He tried to not grin like an absolute maniac, settled for only slightly looking like a maniac, and watched them attempt to not back away from him. "It will be a pity to not share your company at such a grand time," managed Brigida.

"And me, yours." He bowed his head low, not quite a full and elegant scrape. He frowned as he came back up. "Mm. I've been running all around this damn palace today like an idiot, and now I'm near forgetting what I came for. Lady Kara, would you guide me up those few steps and announce me to my Mother? I think these two want to return to their planning. It's all terribly exciting, I can't help but understand…" He trailed off, acting flighty and enjoying the utter confusion he'd leave behind. There wasn't much else he could do to interfere on her behalf, skirting not a few boundaries already, but if she led him up, odds were strong Frigga would then send her off on some errand away from the garden. She had her own patterns, as a Queen.

"Certainly, Highness." She dipped a curtsy and did exactly that, rewarded by his plan by then being promptly shipped off with a handful of scrolls from the hand of the Queen. Kara said nothing. He said nothing. But he wondered, distantly, if Frigga knew what was going on. And if she did, would she ever do anything about it?


	7. Chapter 7

7.

. . .

Loki was barely past the prison guards when he stripped the illusions from himself, already exhausted from a scant hour of morning meetings. Being the King meant he could call his duties to a shortened end, playing at irritation and private demand. He would try to nap through the afternoon, after this visit. Lord Eirund's stupid matter still needed to be handled at soonest opportunity - and he had a potential concern there, depending on how this visit turned out - but Lord Eirund could wait. The King's prerogative was his to claim, meanwhile.

He flung the king's golden cape over his shoulder, freeing his right arm as he approached Heimdall's cell. He'd known, the watchman. His vague warning at the end of the last meet. That threatening smile. The same smile was on his face now, though under it the man looked a bit less pleased than he had before. There was a knife sheathed at Loki's waist. They both knew he wouldn't use it. He let it hang there anyway, a testament to his anger. "And here I am, Heimdall. Still alive, as it happens. How's the food now?"

"We don't get everything we want. My Prince."

"Did you enjoy what you watched?"

"There are fewer weevils." Heimdall inclined his head politely, his golden eyes never leaving the false king. "You kept your word. My prince."

"Who are they?" Loki began to pace in front of the cage, the long and loping steps of a panther trying to tree its prey. "I know you can still see. How did they access the palace? How do they _know_ the palace?"

Heimdall's gilded eyes watched him move, his expression changing just enough to begin to flash the tips of white and gleaming teeth against dark lips. "How could I know? They go masked. Your Highness."

"You play at this, you know you're undermining the security of the very kingdom you swore to defend! Damn my skin, you know full well what they wanted. And they could have gotten it, too, were our tangled fate not a strange and cruel beast. Would you like leaving a path in place for some other person to be slain? Some other king after me?"

"And is that noble concern truly your _first_ concern?" A slow, desultory lean back as Heimdall pretended to remember his manners. "My prince?"

Red began to veil Loki's vision, the raw frustration from too little sleep, from the strain on his body from running through the halls in the dead of night, cloaked invisible by costly magic, frightened when he ought not to have been. He focused it all on Heimdall, there on the other side of the bars, winning against a king despite his imprisonment and Loki stopped in his tracks to wrap long fingers around the bars of that cage, hard enough to scrape his own skin. His voice boiled out in a roar. " _Tell me!_ "

Heimdall stared down at him through the bars and the energy veil of prisoner's gold, still with that small white smile peeking through his dark brown lips. He said nothing. Every second he said nothing, he would keep winning despite the cage that would hold him until he died, if Loki had his way.

There was nothing else Loki could do to him to balance the score. Even torture would gain nothing, if he dared that much evil. Loki continued to grip the bars in fury, feeling the bite of enchanted iron in his palms, tearing at them near to bleeding, and he stood there and stared at Heimdall for so long that unreality snaked over his eyes and told him it was once again himself locked inside that cage instead. He realized he was panting for breath, forced himself to let go. He stepped back, still staring at the watchman. "It isn't me they want," he rattled, the only real knife he had left in this fight. He already knew the tip of it wouldn't land.

"If we're fortunate before the eyes of our gods, it'll be you they take." Heimdall clasped his hands in his lap, a scholar alone at his lectern. "My prince."

" _Damn_ you."

Heimdall watched him and said nothing more. Still with that little smile that hid all the things he knew and wouldn't speak of, and with that smile, he watched Loki leave the prison again, empty-handed and defenseless.

. . .

Loki didn't return to Odin's quarters. He commandeered a little reader's nook, buried deep within the palace with but a single, smaller window that looked out on what seemed to be a well-patrolled walkway. The sort of place he might have hidden away in when he was younger, with rich canvas chaises and long desks and the smells of old incense and the papers of the nearby library filling the space. There was a guard outside, but only one. He couldn't very well ask for half the army to protect an afternoon lair without explaining why, and too many guards meant the odds went up they'd walk in to see what his attacker had the eve before.

If he slept now, securely, he thought he would be able to cadge a little extra time to lay in wait that night. All to see if the masked hunter came 'round again that quickly. Loki suspected they might. The heat in their questions about Odin spoke to an obsession, and he remained the only logical source to slake it by. Leaving obvious traps wouldn't work, not if they were typically as competent as their chase suggested.

But in the meantime, a little extra sleep to make up for what he'd lost the night before. There was a thick, warm blanket folded and hid away under one of the lounges, and it puffed the smell of old, heady incense into the air when he dug it out. Dry musks and the almost bloody red incense Frigga liked for her private magical meditations. His fingers curled into it, breathing in the nostalgia, letting it carry him into dreamless, exhausted sleep as the noontime sun dragged on low towards the hot reds of the evening.

. . .

 _Ago ~_

"Oh, but my prince, I simply don't understand." Lorelei held firmly onto Thor's arm as they passed by a small garden of blood-ruby flowers. She made them both pause as she studied their petals, seeming startled by their saturated richness. "Goodness, the colors…"

"Eir's work, mistress. Something medicinal, as it happens. Not bred for prettiness alone. She likes to use them for poultices as the soul forges cannot be in all places at all times. She packs them away for the field healers." Thor glanced at the flowers, not as interested as she. "Staunches the blood flow. Loki would know more."

"Of course he would. Wise is your younger brother." Lorelei beamed up at him, seeming to forget the garden the instant she looked into his eyes. "Why, I don't think there's a thing that goes on in this palace he doesn't know about."

Thor chuckled. "There might be a few secrets."

Loki, lounging up above in the balcony and watching the refugee maiden do her damnedest to woo his typically oblivious brother while not a little bemusement curved his lips, arched a single eyebrow in doubt at Thor's words. He hadn't _planned_ on eavesdropping on their casual walk, but, well, the opportunity presented itself practically wrapped in a bow. It wasn't in him to resist.

The sisters had found themselves a place in local society with the efficiency of a springtime whirlwind. To their credit, his guess that they might be able to help keep the survivors of the Nornheim war organized was a good one - Amora spent afternoons keeping track of new arrivals, regularly sending information up the chain to himself, Eir and the All-Father's council, and Lorelei administered deliveries to those in need with the help of a handful of palace staff she'd charmed into assisting. A good use of their day's time, while the realm attempted to strangle a war that meant they couldn't safely go home yet.

And in the rest of that time, the pair were becoming _very_ familiar to the royal family. Loki reached down for the goblet of wine he'd picked up on his walk, taking a sip as he continued to listen to Lorelei natter cheerfully at Thor. "But I must confess, I simply don't understand the festival entirely." She squeezed his bicep as Loki watched, starting to grin. "My rural upbringing fails me here. The city is so bright and so much… _more_ than I realized."

"It's a rare festival, Lady Lorelei. One meant entirely for the people and not for us family." Thor patted at her hand and kept walking. They'd be under a different balcony soon. Loki gracefully slid off his bench and followed them, wondering if he'd drop in just to be a bastard about it, or if he'd merely keep listening. "Father's words are simple enough for once, there's no need to look too deeply at it."

Lorelei chuckled, ignoring the accidental insult that could be buried in Thor's words. Loki rolled his eyes as he skulked along above. He was not always what one would call 'emotionally savvy,' his brother. "So it's as plain as that - the feasts and the merchants and the artisans, and then, leading to what? One final hurrah here in the palace?"

"The Lastnight revel, correct." Now something caught Thor's eye. Warriors practicing in the western fields. He took his arm from Lorelei's hand and went to brace both his palms against the railing, grinning as two sets of golden armor slammed against each other. "Now _there's_ a good fight. The one on the left is a brawler, hardly needs his weapons. The other, a bit quicker, but if he gets disarmed, he'll be in the thick. Right now he's on the defense, trying to keep his blade. That's the fight right there - if he holds on, he'll win."

Lorelei's lips quirked in a disappointed moue that made Loki grin harder to see it, now somewhat better hidden behind a handful of ornamental bushes that dotted the pathways above. _You're flirting with a stone wall, young lady. You're going to have to be more blatant than that._

 _Ask poor Sif_.

"And this night festival, all can attend?"

"Correct. The palace belongs to the people, in the end. Not only us in the family. And while there are a handful of exceptions, mostly for the people's security and not our privacy alone, it is their right that all should have a night to come and see _all_ of Asgard." Thor sounded distracted, even though like Loki, it was his responsibility to be clear about the welcomes every citizen deserved. "Oh, now _that_ was a blow! Still he holds his blade!"

"Then whynot can you attend with me, Your Highness?" Lorelei wrapped around his arm again, careful to not try and block his view of the duelers. She was savvy enough to dodge that pitfall. "Oh, it would be the _moment_ of my life to see the culmination of one such grand festival at your side." She smiled with charming ease, downplaying herself with a blatancy that made Loki roll his eyes, fully knowing it could work on Thor. _If_ he noticed. And that was a big if. "As your friend and ally, of course."

Thor glanced down at her, then back at the fight. "'Tis the tradition. I simply cannot, nor my brother, nor the king and queen. For one night, it is as though we do not exist. Only the people, who may mask themselves as they like, if they like."

"Masks? Now that sounds like a call to… deeper urges, if one asks me." Lorelei sniffed primly, as if she'd never thought of such urges in her life. Loki laughed hard, silently and unseen. "People not showing who they really are?"

"It's to ensure all feel a little more equal, lady Lorelei. The royal family are not unaware that there are sometimes troubles between those who feel richer and those who are not. Those who are trueborn Aesir, and who in our realm are not. Even in the city streets closest to the palace. The masks mean a visitor to the palace that night may for once go where they choose without such challenge. Only the Gods may see who we are."

"Oh, I suppose that's fair, then." She stepped back with her hands daintily clasped together as Thor started to lean on the balcony rail, now fully consumed by the fight as it heated up towards its conclusion. "And here I thought you might not attend because my sister already won your attentions."

"Hmm?" Thor didn't budge. For a long, privately hilarious moment, Loki would have bet his three favorite spellbooks that his brother had temporarily forgotten who Amora was. Thor cupped his hands to his mouth, shouting as loud as he could across the fields. "Oh, come on! You've got him on his heels, lad! Don't let him undercu-aww." His shout trailed off as the light caught the spark of a short blade tumbling from a warrior's hand. "There he goes, he's about to lose the damn fight entire."

"My prince?"

Thor shook his head as the disarmed warrior bowed in defeat, mentally rejoining himself on the balcony. "Amora? I don't recall any such matter, I'm sorry."

 _No, she just cornered you for half an hour after dinner night before last, doing that doe-eyed stare they've both got mastered right into your eyes. To be fair, Volstagg was singing that damn song of his that you love about the goat and the groomsman at the time, so you were a wee bit distracted_. Loki leaned against his own rail, almost pushing himself into visible range and no longer really caring. Thor's obliviousness was becoming, frankly, depressing.

"Well." Lorelei tossed her hair over her shoulder, the loose, burgundy-ribboned braid tumbling across a bare arm with elegant flair. "I was mistaken. All the better for me, my lord, for my sister is sweet but a little too of her own mind. Her attentions of late have been more intellectual."

The fight over, Thor started moving again, still mostly in his own thoughts himself. "My brother speaks well of her capability in the city. She - and you, of course - have been most invaluable to the war need."

"Oh, of course!" She clasped her hands together. Loki tilted his head as he followed, noticing the trace of something familiar here. He'd had a sense before of some competition between the sisters, but thus far it had harmlessly come through to the people's benefit - each fighting to do better by their fellow refugees, which he couldn't help but praise. That both were also trying to catch themselves a prince wasn't surprising, but the undertone of rivalrous heat in Lorelei's voice on the topic was new. He supposed he understood it, a little. "It is our absolute honor to serve, and it's also been a joy. To see the people safe and comfortable."

"We are lucky to have you both." Absently, Thor took her hand and bowed over it, setting off an utterly delighted smile that didn't have a trace of falsity to it. Loki rolled his eyes again, nearly downing the rest of his wine in a single shot. That wedge in the door would work against Thor later, whether he remembered the moment or not. "My apologies about the festival. I am certain you and your sister will enjoy it near as much without us."

"Nearly, of course. Only nearly." Lorelei slowly took her hand from his, clasping it together with her other one and following it with a curtsy. "Now come on, let me pour you a fresh glass of wine and I'll be on my way. Evening ministrations, I've some deliveries to make."

"Certainly, mistress."

And with that, they were going to pass out of Loki's view. He weighed the situation, then decided he wasn't going to have any more fun crashing their little two-person party than he'd had listening in, and resumed lounging against the balcony railing.

Two sisters, plying and playing as siblings do, for the affections of a noble house. It wasn't the first time he'd seen such things, considering an affair he'd watched from a distance a few years back that involved some cousin of the Queen, but it was now the closest version of such adventure. Intimately close. He looked into the bottom of his empty glass and considered, muttering to himself because he could. "Amora might be the elder, but by sheer persistence, I almost feel like the younger holds a little more sway here. Interesting."

A moment of sympathy for Amora hit him. Certainly she was being more helpful intellectually at the moment. The bookkeeping and the more arcane details of the refugee work would normally have been shouldered almost entirely by him at this point. Having the help allowed him considerable more free time during the start of the festival season than he'd expected. And the given reward for the lady was being left in the dust by her more ebullient younger sister.

He shook his head and shoved himself away from the railing with a little more force than he intended. In the end, like that poor handmaiden's fight the morning before, it wasn't his problem, and nor did he have any real solutions. For now, he would be best off minding his own business entirely.


	8. Chapter 8

8.

. . .

Still thinking about the sisters and their ploy for Thor's attentions, Loki skipped the family's evening gathering and took a small meal alone, not far from the library. After, he went and found one of the reference texts he'd been studying, an old and dry elementalist treatise on the fundamental use of empty air in illusory crafting, and took himself off to an even more secluded area not far from Frigga's tower.

This was an area of small viewing pools and flowering gardens, another one of such curated sanctums where the Queen held sway and where the healers again often plied their hobbies. He wrinkled his nose at the strong but not unpleasant smell of the night-bloom irises as they wafted up to him where he used a broad gold marble windowsill as a reader's desk. With the night lit up diamond bright from the stars, he didn't need a candle, though a stubby one rested nearby just in case. His fine ears caught the sounds of the street parties only now revving up to last into the deep night. Not usually the sort of amusement fare he liked, but let them to it. Thor might slip off again to disappear into that stream of people, and he was just as welcome to do so. Leave Loki to the silence and his own grinding thoughts as better companions tonight.

The first few weeks of the festival were already past, travelers from around the Nine Realms surging into the city to celebrate and share tales and offer their wares to one another. During the day Loki sometimes went out to see if there were any sages and storytellers more to his interests. Not often did he find anything worth taking back to his private quarters, although once he did find an old Alfheim mystic with a shelf of sorcerer's focus stones that were of better value and power than the mystic was letting on. He bargained for two of them on the spot, one for himself and one to surprise the Queen with on one of the coming eves of the festival.

The sounds of the revels didn't distract him, Loki was used to that and more. And yet tonight he found his gaze drifting from the words of the page off into the depths of what space laid between the stars. He was restless, but he didn't know why. Sometimes there wasn't a why, certainly not one he could ever find. It was part of him to feel out of place now and again, a mystery to his life that he accepted, even if he was not contented by it.

Chewing on the inside corner of his lip, he tried to reassert his focus, re-reading the same ascetic line about the intricacies of harnessing null aether three times and then one more for good measure before his attention drifted off again into the black.

Suddenly, motion caught his unfocused eye in one of the Queen's gardens below. Loki leaned out a little more to watch the shadow of a fine, lithe figure in a dark and flowing dress move easily between a handful of flowering trees towards one of the ponds. He arched an eyebrow, watching the figure as they paused and then moved on to the edge of a different one fed with little streams of running water split fine and burbling between low, flat stones. Fallen leaves and lilypads dotted its otherwise mirror-calm surface, its outline ringed by blue vines, and all of its liveliness born of some of the rarest, most beautiful cuttings to be found in Asgard's gardens.

Loki gently shut the book he was actively not reading with one hand, the other still laid with his palm flat against the cool marble, and he watched as the figure stood like a statue of some forgotten goddess at the edge of the water. He saw their head flick around, looking for active watchers, and he ducked back further into the darkness just before that scan might have come across him.

Apparently satisfied with their solitude, the figure observed the water in front of them again, with its crystalline brooks and its damp stones, and then, born of a sparrow's quiet delicacy, a small jump carried her to one of those flat stones resting in the heart of the pool.

His eyebrow arched near to his hairline and he leaned out again as the girl perched there, balanced carefully at first on the pad of one bare foot. Then she began to move with confidence, the other foot coming down to share a stone too small for most. A strong twist of her legs carried her to another stone, her arms coming up in a slow and deliberate flow with her hands posturing fine and primly to frame herself like a butterfly on the wind. Then again to a stone smaller than the first, with a free swivel of her hips and a dip of her head to turn a stream of unbound hair into a dark tidal wave roiling out on that wind of her own making.

She _danced_ , Loki realized, startled. Free, with no one to see her, someone was claiming the Queen's gardens for her own private supremacy. No one to stop her, to control her, to tell her what she must do. Just for a little while.

The girl swayed gently to whatever she secretly heard as her own music, picking up speed and moving from skip-stone to stone with enough elegant confidence that she may as well have been gliding along smooth palace marble instead. She began to interlace her dance with grander movements, hip-curving bows and rippling contortions of her torso that threatened to toss her into the water but never did. Her control was too fine. Instead, he watched the sleeves and hem of the loose silk she wore obey her almost sorcerous whim, a stream of controlled gliding taking her low, too low, and the fabric wafting close enough to the surface of the water to kiss alive the faintest ripple - only to then come away untouched.

Perfect control and grace. He realized his face was surprisingly hot, knowing that of all the things he had spied on in the palace over these last few years, what this girl was up to was not meant for him - nor anyone else - to see. Still, he watched as the private dance sped up, becoming something more than freedom. Primal, like some near-forgotten rite.

She stayed balanced on her toes, skipping from stone to stone and bringing her hands together in the silent claps that punctuated this ritual dance that had meaning only to her. A rondel meant for gods and the stars alone, her feet teasing the skin of the water but never making contact. A fingernail tracing along the petiole of a lilypad as she swept past, like the bare back of a lover. The silent whisper of promise past her lips.

Loki knew to his bones he should not have been there, witness to this. His palms were cold with sweat as he watched, stunned, unaware of how long the girl danced there with only starlight as a partner. It might have been only seconds. It might have been an hour. He would have liked to watch for a year.

And then she stopped, freezing atop a stone near the edge of the pond as if she might have been alerted to intruders. Her skirt settled calm around her legs and she looked around again, finding nothing and no one. Not him, pulled deep into the shadows again with only his wide and staring eyes to give him away. If he were caught now, he would owe more than an apology. Blood offering, perhaps. He might have granted it. But whatever had caught her attention, it had been enough to break the spell. The gloaming she'd stolen was over.

He realized as she left, padding away fast and silent back into the depths of the palace where she belonged, that he knew exactly who she was. Had seen it the moment the dance began, in the curve of her narrow, youthful face and the quickness of her eyes as she searched for spies like him, but his thoughts could not congeal her name until the moment was over. Then he understood what he'd seen was a kind of private revenge against those who'd done her wrong.

It was Kara, the Queen's beleaguered young handmaiden.

. . .

Loki woke to the low, gravelly sound of someone clearing their throat with insistent deliberateness, his fingers still dug deep into the afghan draped across him. He froze, fingers worming for one of the three knives at his thigh.

"You're awake," came the muted voice. "You were better armed this time, which is understandable." A dry snort punctuated the next. "And dressed. Which is preferable."

His fingers found the thin leather sheaths still strapped tight - and no blades inside them. He jerked upright to stare at the black figure, not even attempting to be coy about it.

A leather glove hand flicked out, casually. His three blades dropped to the out of reach end table by the window with a soft clatter - the small window itself filled with that almost hazy profile from the night before. They were lounged along its brim as though it were one of the low chaises within the room itself, balanced casually with a soft-soled boot dangling from the ledge. "Won't need to worry about the guards for a little while yet. They've got a fifteen minute overlap on this particular shift change, and even then they won't see me for an extra five or so if I skip around a bit." A single finger came up to tap at the mask where lips might be. "Oh, but there are at least three in the hall right now, courtesy of that same change. You _could_ scream for them, but, well. I think you established last eve that it's a less than optimal outcome… for you."

Loki studied the shape, picking at the voice, trying to find something, anything to wedge into. As Heimdall had newly retaught him, his best option was to stay silent and wait for a better opening. Eat away at that fifteen minutes or more, at least.

"If you want to play the silent game, which is, I confess, a smart enough choice, I remind you I have all the knives in this room. You _will_ scream, if I should choose to force the issue."

Good threat. He'd gone cold all over, the sort of chill that masked the calm of someone ready to fight and die if need - but he had no plans for the latter. "It costs me nothing to dress my face and scream, regardless. Your plan has a flaw."

"It costs you plenty, prince." The figure tilted their head as they punctured through his lie, seeming to study him. "Magic costs. It's got you in its debt. How long have you been wearing these masks? A few months, a little longer?" Their voice trailed in the air like smoke, going quiet and soft. "Since not long after the death of the queen?"

He said nothing. Listening, the shell of his ear prickling as he searched for what he could. _Almost feminine, just then. Not wise to wager it all, not yet, but that was a softer grief._ It told him nothing else, just the first needle to slip a thread of suspicion onto.

"Reckon you're in a harsh debt about to come due, prince. In more ways than one." Genderless again, damn it. His fingers dug and tore into the afghan instead of his attacker. "Anyway. Looks as if you've been asleep half an hour, maybe a touch more. Not exactly going to light up the night with sorcery on that worn out little candle of your spirit."

"You talk an astounding amount for a hired killer."

A short, brittle bark of a laugh. "You're digging for information. Never were a fool." The dangling leg came up to match its bent partner. Absurdly, arms reached out to hug them, like a little girl might. "Oh, but, that itself might be a clue for you! How silly of me, Your Highness!"

Then the hunter _tittered_. Loki swallowed, realizing that the absurdity of their actions gave him nothing again. They were willing to make themselves into anything and anyone. Formless. Shapeless. Just a small death waiting for him in the window, like a magpie after the rain. "And all you want is Odin."

"All I want, smart prince, is Odin."

"Why?"

"The man that stole the throne for all his unknown reasons and his knowable strife asks _me_ why. Gods bless and Gods save. For that alone I ought strike." The mask leaned in, for a moment letting him see clearly where the leather parts of the mask was burned with blacker shapes of twining vines and leaves, a paradoxically pretty thing. In death, the hunter wore symbols of life. "Do you _need_ a why? Do you _care_ why?"

"I asked why."

"You were always good at angling for time, and here I am carelessly giving it to you." The figure sighed and leaned back again, audibly annoyed with him. "Is he alive, yes or no, and if yes, where did you stash his miserable old form?"

"And if no?"

"I will be heavily disappointed, but I suppose I will struggle on." It came out with an odd, flat neutrality. "Which is it? I'll know a lie, prince. Even from your serpentine mouth."

Loki studied the shadow, saying nothing, giving away nothing. Maybe it was indeed a woman. They were lithe and small enough - but trained killers were often selected for such traits. It gave him no guarantees.

"I can see you need a certain amount of _motivation_. All right. Here's this, then - if your ruse gets flushed out, you're deep in the dip and the Nine Realms transform into a singularly busy hive to find out what exactly did, in fact, happen to the King. They'll take what they want from the strips of your skin if they need to, and then all I have to do is sit back and wait for my answers. And if he's alive and found… I'm patient, prince. I can be _terribly_ patient." The mask tilted again. "Up to a certain point. We do not want what lies after that."

"And here I dimly thought this might not end in blackmail."

"You're the one in blackmailable position. Look at you, the way you're dressed. One might think you've got something to lose." Taunting him again. He felt the blood rush across his face. "Oh, that was a bit mean of me. Certainly I wouldn't like it said to me, though I'm not the one that pretends to be the king. All right. You've got a little time to think, Prince Loki, because that's what you do. And when I think you've started to realize you don't have many options beyond the most elegantly simple - answer my _godsdamned_ _question_ \- I'll come by again."

"You just might be disappointed, hunter."

"The walls will begin to tighten all around you not long after, if so. Think on that _clue_ , Prince. I can make it happen, unstoppable, dooming you, and you'll never see the trap's teeth coming until it's far too late. You'll live in dread till they tear you from the throne. I'll give you that for free. You can think about it all you like until you see me again." The figure unfolded from the windowsill, soft heels touching the floor. "Don't move. It'll be worse for you than for me if you do."

Loki didn't move, but he did speak, angry. "Is this a hire for you? Is this Lord Eirund's doing? Or something else? Fine, I've dug for what clues I can. Give me another one. What's the shape of my enemy here? Who are you? What is this about?" He doubted some of his own possibilities, but it was an attempt to lay out a shape of the field, something to fix his position.

Something cold laid against his throat, an edge of metal so sharp it felt like it could have been frozen. The voice hissed into his ear, a haunt all its own, still possibly feminine, all hostility. "This is personal, prince. This is _deeply_ personal, and you won't be able to bargain or trick your way through it. Bear that next _clue_ in mind."

His teeth baring in frustration, he watched the figure then casually open the door and walk out into the lighted hall, to the sounds of distant booted feet and no alarmed shouts from any guard. Then it shut behind the hunter, leaving him in silence, and with his knives still splayed on the table by the window, useless.


	9. Chapter 9

9.

. . .

 _Ago_ ~

The end of another summer crawled towards Asgard, cooler nighttime becoming the hours in which most were awake and glad of their realm and their lords. Not far away the war yet ebbed and flowed, with refugees still passing through the gates of the city often to be lost in the merchant sea. The nine nights of revels had finally passed to leave only the one, and as dusk cast its twilight cloak over the golden palace, the people waited for its gates to open and for its noble residents to disappear as if ghosts. Many of them were indeed masked to give them a sense of equality, children with silly aurochs faces and fairy paints, unknowables with gleamingly false gemstone eyes set amidst the chaos of feathers and furs, rich silken veils and engraved iron plates.

Odin stood alone, visible at the edge of a balcony centered above the grand double doors, waiting for the sun to bow into darkness before the realm. When he disappeared inside, he would, in metaphorical essence, be gone from Asgard - at least for a little while.

Loki heard the roar of the crowd when the moment came, saw Odin slip within and down the halls. The All-Father intended to lock himself in his private quarters for the night, those towers and distant rooms shared with the Queen - the residences were some of the few parcels of castle territory that remained off-limits. Much of the rest had masked and volunteering guards to guide visitors through so they would not get lost, and for good reasons.

He could have disappeared into the oldest depths of the libraries, hallways gone dusty and cold, where only the most insistent explorer would stumble on him pretending to not be there. It was what he'd considered doing when the festival was announced to the family prior to the people. Now he had something else in mind, a scrap of rebellion caught deep in his throat. Even Thor was sealed away in his quarters, drinking out the night with young Hogun, who had the least interest of all Thor's warrior friends in the festival itself. But Loki was still walking the halls at the knife's edge of his one night curfew, trying to decide if he dared go against the word of kings and, by archaic extension, old gods.

There were many waiting in the palace who had the same freedom now as the people now thronging through the doors below, healers and waitstaff and advisors, many of whom had already donned masks of their own and were drinking rare Dwarven meads and being jovial in the halls, still clustered together in their own knowing kettles.

Loki thought that was rather missing the _entire point_ , but people will do what people will do. He moved through shadows, meanwhile, not having mastered the art of invisibility yet but instead a kind of softer illusion one could call going _dim,_ and he passed by these knots of the palace residents without ever being glanced at.

He dipped into the blackened arch of a doorway as two pairs of footsteps came his way, the sound telling him they were in a hurry and that they were smack enough in the center of the hall to spot him if he didn't move deeper out of sight. He watched from a sharp corner just within the door as the Nornheim sisters passed by him without realizing, Amora with a gold and emerald mask felted into the shape of some kind of fae bird in her hand, Lorelei with a simpler eyemask crowned with sapphire feathers and dangling crystal beads. They were muttering to each other, words he couldn't quite make out. Both looked disappointed by the creak and downward curves of their mouths, and he assumed with a smirk that they'd tried one more time to get access to Thor for the eve - no doubt attempting to play on the solitude and loneliness he and Hogun and a _ridiculously_ large array of beer were absolutely not going to be feeling tonight.

Better luck for the girls than they realized, in his estimation. Loki personally wagered both young men would be passed out well before dawn, if not short after midnight. Not the best way for a pair of young rural noblewomen to spend their last festival eve. He could have trailed them, too, but they didn't warrant his attention enough to consider breaking the old rules. Amora had begun flirting with him, meanwhile, over refugee documentations and useful suggestions on how to handle the survivors, but his mind remained uninterested in her ploys.

Instead he continued to move through the halls, down to where the noises of the crowd began to grow and press together thick as a rainstorm, passing the featureless black mask he'd secretly commissioned from a tailor between his hands and feeling the smooth, perfect void of it under his fingertips. A long silken hood completed it, just as black, and gloves were tucked into the void-black tunic he wore hidden underneath a prince's dark greys and green linens. The rest of him would match, of course. A death's head he'd be if he chose, a haunt. A hole in the night. If he wanted to be lawyerly about it, he could argue that under a costume as empty as this one, he indeed would not exist again until dawn. Only one more nameless shadow drifting among the countless others that filled Asgard tonight.

Go out amidst the night - and best not be caught. Or be the dutiful son of kings and not go at all. His fingers traced the hollows where his eyes would hide, masked behind a silk so fine that he could see through but no one else could recognize those eyes or their color.

He wasn't sure what he wanted from this escapade. Or even if he could pull it off. But a moment later the hood was over his face and his day's clothes were hidden well in a high nook behind one of the great old statues. More than one dusty old toy rattled at his scurry, a testament to how safe his things would be until he returned.

After that, he was lost in a sea of people, testing his own ability to identify others based on their movement and personality alone.

. . .

It was an easier game than he thought. For a while, he followed Eir's familiar rapid pace with her hands neatly clasped together as she silently dipped through the merchant stalls, wearing a thick, viscously red veil that Loki immediately realized was a healer's idea of a bloody joke. She crossed paths with Thor's friend Volstagg, who didn't bother with a mask - and no wonder, with his size and girth, he was going to be remarkable even disguised as one of those stony Kronan marauders.

Loki switched paths anyway, trailing the big fellow back towards home to observe the damage he did to men like the poor sausage vendor who'd opportunistically set up shop not far from the palace gates, and who clearly had never encountered someone like Volstagg before. No one paid any attention him pretending to be a shadow drifting under candles and ancient magelights. He found he liked that. A few hours where who he was and his rocky sense of place in Asgard didn't matter. Just another ghost, answering to no one.

He paused at the edge of the main road, letting Volstagg out of his sight and realizing he was stuck amidst a press of people that moved too quickly, too busily for him to study. It made his heart jump, lost for a moment in the storm of the crowd even though he was still in the shadow of the palace itself. Loki worked himself to the fringes, near a row of hedges, and found himself listening to the recognizable voices of palace staff chattering and then diving into that same crowd. He worked his way to the edge of the hedge to study them, still not seeing what he wanted.

Then he did.

He wasn't certain at first. The girl's long tunic was plain linen, embroidered with small vines, and she wore a white mask painted at its edges with tiny blue flowers. Then she moved, and he was. The Queen's handmaiden passed by him with a glimmer of that same, careful grace she'd danced with, and he realized the bland, handcrafted anonymity of her costume was another ruse. The simple paint was studded with minuscule gems, the vines careful green silk ribbons that took hours to twist and embroider, that linen layered underneath with more valuable and silky blue just barely peeking out to offer a hint to the clever enough observer.

Laughter reached his ears, a knot of girls moving with more familiar gaits. Not the Nornheim sisters; he recognized the other handmaidens instead. Kara slid towards him without intent, not paying attention to the shadow by the hedges or any of the others in the press. Her white mask watched the same gaggle, and he could see the tension in her shoulders.

"She's out here somewhere." Brigida laughed through teal velvet, sour. "Oh, well. I suppose she does have the right."

"Always with the Queen, these days. Makes her special, I wager she thinks. Can't let her get any delusions, now." Mette grabbed the hands of a young man walking with the knot. Loki didn't recognize him by his movement, nor by the glimpse of wide blue eyes behind an owl's even wider ones. Likely a palace chandler or one of the men's ewery staff, not one of his known regulars. "Nothing good comes from delusions."

Kara slipped further back into the hedge, the stiffness in her neck telling Loki she was listening furiously. Still, she was in view of them as they fully emerged into the open night and with nowhere else to hide in case they recognized some trace of her. He shuffled his position, deliberately clumsy, practically falling in front of her like a drunk minstrel.

"No, it doesn't, but really. I'm not going to spend my whole night worrying about one sorry little girl. Ugh, so many people!" Brigida ducked her head out, watching the traffic mill by. "Come on, let's go towards the food stalls. I want a little cake before I shop. Don't you, Helena?"

"Wouldn't mind," said the third wheel, more sedate than the rest.

"Arseholes," said Kara behind Loki, low and meant entirely for her own ears. He heard anyway, his sharper than most. "Twin arseholes with a little power, and the third too frightened to speak up for herself." Followed by a heavy sigh that began to trail off as she moved down the walk away from him. The voice picked up for a moment as he collected himself back upright. "Thank you for shelter, shadow."

He looked after her, catching her studying glance with a tilt of his own head. Loki gave her a small, plain bow, and then, pretending to be nothing more than that shadow he played at, he followed in her wake to a laugh that said she understood his game.

. . .

Loki followed Kara through a cluster of merchant stalls not far from the palace, booksellers and jewelers and sages. Most of which he'd passed by before as a prince and now went unnoticed. A few tried to talk with the handmaiden and she glided away from almost all, although one old man with some dusty, rare rune-tomes of history got a whispered conversation buried under the clang of revels out of her. She left empty-handed, and he couldn't tell if she was disappointed or not. He hung back, a long shadow under the high moon. Polite and in character both. The old man reorganized his books along the long shelf he was using as a display, and Loki marked his face to remember later, out of curiosity.

Now and then she glanced back at her second shadow, the curve of her eyes under the mask betraying a trace of bemusement. But she didn't speak to him, and why not? Mirrors might get a word here and there, but not shadows.

She kept close to the palace, Loki realized. Mostly traveling in a careful circuit, visiting another stall that carried bits of sumptuous cloth, once stopping by a dim little nook operated by a poor-looking woman selling candied treats. Kara bought a bagged handful from her, salted chews and something lemony whose scent he didn't recognize, and with a quick turn, a crinkle of the bag, and a laugh that surprised him, she tossed him a share of both. He caught everything easily, sneaking a bite of each under his mask and found they were delicious.

She lost him once, not long after that. He wasn't even sure how she'd managed it, the crowd ebbing and flowing as a line of bards careened down a thoroughfare, leading hooting and drunken warriors on to the next stop on a particularly profane bar crawl. One moment Kara was there at the edge, seeming to try and not be trampled, and the next she was gone.

Loki froze, scanning the crowd and not finding her. At least she wasn't harmed in the press; no calls rang through the air for anyone injured. Still, she was out of his sight at a crossroads just off the main road. Inns to the left and a riotous crowd to the right. He shook his head and decided to backtrack to the merchants. If she'd slipped him, well, there was nothing he could do about it, and he wasn't inclined to be too much the stalker. He'd played his game, he couldn't ask for more.

He made it halfway back to those first stalls she'd passed when something flew towards him out of a dim alley, threatening to bonk him on the head. He ducked on instinct, sensing it and snatching it neatly out of the air with a black glove. Another salted chew. He stared at it, small and golden in his palm, and then he heard that same laugh from the alley. Kara slipped out from the shadows with a wave of a hand and all but danced back onto her way towards the palace.

Stunned by the trick, he followed in her wake, her silent shadow again.

. . .

Back on palace grounds, Kara crept more carefully, watching for the other girls and moving through those private gardens around the fringe of the castle where even staff normally couldn't go without express permission. She kept her hands folded behind her back as she passed by lilies and roses and strange old things that were not quite crocuses, and Loki followed her, still silent company as the hours of the night wore on. They passed couples and guards, quiet loners and laughing children chewing at candies as big as their small hands. It was well into the small hours with dawn not far off when she finally spoke to him, her white dress still gliding in front of his black. "I can't be that particularly interesting, tall shadow. Poor company, I am. You could have spent the Last Night walking just about anywhere, with anyone else."

He said nothing, of course.

Kara laughed, the sound of it ironic. "But then that's the life of a shadow, isn't it? You go where you must, once fixed to a form. It's natural law, unbreakable." She glanced over her shoulder at him, and he could see her eyes crinkling inside the mask. "Proportions are a bit off, however. You're far too tall to be _my_ shadow."

He said nothing. But he did shrug, a small one.

She stepped back, mock horrified, a hand flying to her chest. Her gasp stayed low, so she wouldn't accidentally draw attention as if there were a real shock going on. "Ye Gods, it has a personality of its own! A possessed shadow after all."

Loki had to fight a laugh at her drama.

"You've given yourself away. Not just a shadow or a ghost, are you?" She leaned in towards him, her voice teasing. "But some creature mild enough to accept a quieter night in a grander festival. Not much of a demon, then, either."

He tilted his head at her, and inside the mask the corners of his lips tightened. She couldn't have any sort of guess who he was, of course. But still, the way she teased, the tone she used…

Kara leaned back again, seeming to let the moment go. Her hand drifted over one of the night irises. "Ah, but never mind. This night, all ghosts go where they will. Even you and me. That's the other natural law, isn't it? Despite what others might tell you." She looked back at him. "That is the paradox. We do what others tell us we must, even when those same people might go on and say free will matters in the eyes of the old and we must be responsible for our own whims." She shrugged. "So which is it that rules a life? Ourselves, or our Gods?"

Loki studied her, remaining silent, thinking about that. There were deep old texts on such thoughts, and everyone had an opinion. He wasn't entirely sure of his own, not yet. Then he shrugged, more dramatically, then lifted one hand in a see-saw motion. _Maybe a little of both_ , the equivocator's safe answer.

"Mm." She clasped her hands together. "Is that it, though?" Then a sharp shake of her head. "But at the same time, how much does it matter?"

He felt troubled. This was a lot of weight for a handmaiden to hold, and not something he typically encountered within the palace. This was for warriors and philosophers, and clockwork creatures like himself.

"I see you pause. I'm sorry. Happens sometimes when the night becomes small and begins to shrink before the daylight, my mouth runs off with my thoughts. Was I supposed to only speak of embroidery and galas?"

He could see her eyes as she studied him, wry and not at all angry. He shook his head slowly, trying to show his seriousness, wishing he dared speak. But if he did, the game _would_ be given away, this small crime of his. Maybe a little of both, he'd indicated - but what the Gods didn't know wouldn't hurt _him_.

"Well. Regardless, I probably ought not to ramble. Again, I'm sorry. I don't get to talk to others often. The Queen is her own person and I've not much for company among the other girls, as you've seen." She sighed, ignoring the tilt of his head. "If Helena had a spine… but, well."

Loki stepped closer, catching her glance. Then he nodded, slowly. This was a thing he understood. Books were his good company, but books were not good conversationalists. Then he waved a hand on, trying to guide. There was one more pleasant garden along this path, an all but secret one off the main walkways. A treasure of the palace. Just enough time before the dawn to see it, if she liked.

She laughed, small and quiet, and moved to follow him this time.

. . .

They were pollen-drifters. Small, alien flowers collected by warriors and healers from elsewhere in the galaxy, rumored by the grovekeepers to have a grain of some floating, communal sentience. He didn't know where they came from, not for certain. Rare things, their glowing white seeds kept close by the invisible shield that rippled electric over their skin as the masked pair passed through it. The flowers themselves were a deep, rich blue that dipped into shades that their eyes couldn't see. "Oh," said Kara, reaching out with a cupped hand as the gleaming white pollen hung in the air like stardust. Fading moonlight caught them, twinkling blue and white. "I… didn't know this garden was here."

He still couldn't say anything, couldn't explain that the garden was small and mundane by daylight, easily missed unless one looked for it. The pollen only burst well after moonrise, and the flowers bloomed when they chose. Often in summer, though, so he'd figured tonight was a good chance for it. Loki found this sanctum by accident as a child, roaming at night, playing hide and seek with Thor. He won that round, but stayed almost another hour to watch the pollen drift through the air when moved by his hand, like little sprites following him about. Maybe on some small level, they were.

Now they followed Kara as she moved from one small bush to the next, watching as the pollen gathered close and magnetic around her form only to puff away again on a faint breeze or a slight motion. "I've never seen anything like these, not anywhere." Her voice turned rueful, her words followed with a small laugh. "True, I haven't been that many places yet."

He took over a small stone bench, rustling his voidblack fabric across its surface as he sat, watching her, watching the flowers. She glanced back at him as he clasped his gloved hands in his lap, but he had no guess as to her expression. She said nothing now, but knelt next to one of the brightest bushes, where the pollen gathered the strongest. He suspected it was the original cutting, the mother flower, but that was nothing more than a guess.

"It's peaceful here," she said eventually, still quiet. "There's not many places in the palace that feel calm like this. There's always a whisper of something, some… energy, I suppose, that you always feel aware of. The prisons have their ghosts and the kitchens have their own kind of blood. Voices and drafts and memories." Her voice turned wry. "But it's nice to remember there are those few silent places left."

She looked at him, her eyes half-lidded under the mask. "I didn't grow up somewhere very quiet. It's all I can say, really, but it's a rarity to me. And for that, beautiful."

Loki cocked his head at her, a little quizzical, a lot understanding.

She laughed and turned back to the flowers, leaning back on her heels a bit and clearly not caring about the grass that might already be staining her long tunic. "I like this far better than the rowdiness elsewhere." Silence filled the garden for a moment that felt more like another secret, hidden hour. "Thank you."

He nodded to Kara when she glanced his way again, rising up and brushing grass from knees bare under the white linen. Then she turned her head to look at the way the sky seemed to purple at the rim of the world, the nighttime black giving way to the rising dawn. Only a few minutes left before the morning star itself would cut through, that sharp flare. "Almost over, then," she said, sounding rueful. "Sunrise comes, masks off and daily routines hard-forged for us again."

Loki rose, looking down at her and realizing he needed to go while he could. The flood of people leaving the palace would quickly become a hard swim upstream, and he wanted to be well-hidden near the cordoned-off areas before someone got wise to his absence. She continued to watch the sunrise, not looking at the shadow behind her, and again she surprised him with a wry, if soft-toned tease."You had better go while you can, shadow. Dawn burns your kind, I expect. Thank you again. For the company… and the quiet."

More of the darkness began to flare off, the undersides of a few light morning clouds turning fire-bright, the last warning. Loki hesitated, knowing she was right, wondering what she thought - if she knew, if she suspected - and realizing somehow the questions were irrelevant. What was important was that he left while he could.

Still, he hesitated until she turned to look at him, seeming concerned. He reached out, pulled the top of her mask free from her forehead with one gloved hand, and then, with a quick and not a little mischievous tweak of his own that left most of his face still obscured, brushed his lips past the crown of her hair where it met the smooth skin of her brow. His own silent gratitude for the company.

As ever, it was all he could do. And with that, he was gone with the dawn, in silence, never looking back to see Kara's reaction, and making it back to the secret halls in damn near a dead run.

Worth it. He laughed as the morning servants came to him in his rooms later and saw nothing awry, quiet and for no one but himself.


	10. Chapter 10

10.

. . .

Cloaked as the King, Loki stared balefully down at Lord Eirund as he knelt before the golden throne. The young man was in the midst of stammering out his last ploy, a feeble thing that both men knew wouldn't win him back his secret prize. "My King, there are not words enough for my gratitude at your offer, but-"

"But what, Lord Eirund?" Loki flung out the words through the veil of his beard, a scatter of old man's gravel. "I have given you my decision, as you have asked." He leaned forward in the seat, bending low, letting the brown and gold ribbons of the royal cloak nearly hit the groveling creature in the face. "Will you attempt to plea with us about the _law_?"

Eirund flinched back at the way the last word drawled out, glancing up furtively and meeting the 'King's' one good eye with his own frightened pair. Loki blazed back as hot as the braziers on either side of his throne, letting the lord see what he feared - that his hidden prize was known to the throne, and he now bordered on a kind of criminal theft, should the king choose to call him out for his ruse. "My apologies, Your Majesty. I have been waiting for the day of my cousin's wedding so long, it is… difficult now to let it go."

"So it is. And so you must." Loki settled back in the throne, worrying at the gold with his gnarled fingers. "But you do not leave empty-handed. Content yourself with that, young lord." He inclined his head, ironically polite.

"Of course, Your Majesty." Eirund cleared his throat with a strained rattle and scuttled back from the throne, losing himself in the milling crowd of petitioners and staff with almost amusing quickness.

Loki beckoned one of the messenger boys closer without looking at him, thrusting at him a sealed writ that would carry an offer to the girl whose dowry had been in question. Thor's advice won out, after all. It resulted in legal protection for the girl now and for her future, and a potentially substantial trader's contract for the lord - if Eirund realized this and actually worked for its success. He supposed at the least that meant the matter was good and done, and by the sheer terror in Eirund's face - and his hunter's own particularly focused ire - he could disregard the scenario entirely as a factor in his current, unwelcome haunts.

He found himself searching the crowd, studying faces with his own drawn taut under that long grey beard, and realized the prickle at the back of his neck, worming cold under the illusion he wore, was not yet sweat from the hot fires but honest fear crawling close inside his throat. He had nothing to search for but the vague shape of a shadow, and nothing to guide him but his instincts gone awry under the weight of heavier paranoia.

Shadows… Loki shook his head once, sharp, as if cobwebs suddenly broke loose in his mind to tickle him. He looked again at the people, each one here to curry a king's favor or plea for some kindness, or, worse yet, again seek to empower themselves by virtue of his acknowledgement, and he wondered if his stalker was right now in the very room with him. Likely? Probable, considering the nature of their threats.

He watched dancers glide from one end of the hall to the other, servants perfectly managing armloads of goblets and serving plates. He watched agile young lords and at one point his grip tightened upon the throne as a shriek filled the hall and caught a number of gazes. But it was only a small parcel of youngsters, one girl being chased by another three, their laughter and fast moving skirts causing a ruckus in the back of the hall as older adults looked on, weary with the abundant verve of the young.

Loki forced his hands to relax, going tired and still on the throne, a statue from some older era. But he continued to watch each and every face he could as supplicants began to again take their turns before him, listening inattentively, looking for the one that glanced back in just the wrong way to tell him they had an ill thought in mind.

Not one of them did. Not one. The laughter grew until his mind began to swirl with the ghostly echoes of it.

The tickle at the nape of his neck grew sharper and now he _knew_ his hunter was there among them, and further, he knew he was not going to find them out this way. The field was to their benefit alone. Loki shifted in the throne, sweating openly now, hearing nothing, that one eye stuck fast open and flickering like a wild animal across the hall. Another minute, maybe two, and the adrenaline charging through his body would force him to flee his own throne outright.

In the shadowed back of the crowd rose more laughter, light and free. When he snapped his head towards it, whoever had laughed was gone.

. . .

 _Ago_ ~

He was early again, but with the handmaidens bustling around on other errands, Loki was able to spend his time waiting for lessons by resting comfortably on one of the Queen's many benches within her solar. He watched his mother's back as Frigga rushed through another missive, possibly some letter to a Vanaheim cousin or a nicety to another local lord. Maybe even a careful, politically encouraging call from a Queen to a young warrior stationed near Nornheim, something that would be shared with others in the camp to cheer them. With the festival now over some few weeks, the kingdom was still catching up to its business and routines had not quite entirely resettled.

Loki could see the focus stone he'd given Frigga towards the end of the revels sitting on the desk with its small and plush velvet cushion and smiled for a moment. On his lap now was a gift of a different sort, but he knew full well he had to be a bit careful about it. Rank mattered, and tone, and intent.

The scratch of the pen stopped. Frigga deftly cleaned off the sharp metal tip of it in a dip of water and set it aside. She turned to study her son, visibly tired and without any of her usual jewels or finery adorning her brow. Comfort reigned today. The last eve had been a long one, with the King and Queen poring over maps and tactics with their generals. Thor already snuck afield now and again to fight his witches, and by now Loki suspected the royal parents knew full well what he was up to. He would return more regularly, if only to play up the ruse of being a dutiful son. Although that Lorelei was still and ever working at him, insistent and charming both. It harmed nothing if Thor spent a small amount of time being pawed at, and it gave Loki a good laugh.

As for himself otherwise, however… "I don't suppose you're up for a day's rest," said Frigga, looking ruefully at him. Her fingers toyed at the back of her chair, nails tapping a mantra of her own.

He went for the tease, not minding, sounding playful as he lounged back in his seat. "But Your Majesty, it's always you that tells me that the most valuable lessons of magical control and focus come when we're at our worst."

She waggled a finger at him, amused. "You have a point, young prince. You are also in rare position to do your old mother a rather vast favor."

"Reassure you that you are far from old?"

"Flattery, my son, is often a good tool but not so good a one here against me. I am too well armored against such things." She snorted at him, glancing at the book in his lap and then back to his face. "Give old mother a day and I'll make it up to you in full in due time."

"I _suppose_ I can be persuaded." Loki grinned, already entirely so. "You know I'll just spend it in the library anyway." His hands fiddled with the tome in his lap. "Before I go, however, I was wondering if I might beg of you a minor indulgence."

She studied him, her brow creasing once under the crown of loosely knotted honey-gold braids. If there were silver threads in his mother's hair, his sharp eyes couldn't find them. Then she beckoned to him with a gentle flick of her hand. "Which is?"

He took a breath. "All protocol borne carefully in mind, I thought to ask if you might pass this small book on to one of your handmaidens. It's just a history that I thought might be enjoyed." A rare enough one, admittedly. An interesting little tome of old Alfheim lore, sold by a unassuming and ancient night-revel vendor who'd _just_ missed a sale on the last night of those revels. He didn't ask why. That much wasn't his business.

Frigga leaned back without responding, one shoulder blade nestled in its plate of simple but decorative silver armor now pressed hard against the desk.

Suddenly Loki realized he couldn't read her. "To the youngest of yours, Lady Kara."

He was caught completely off guard by the cool formality of her tone. "Of my two sons, it was not you I would ever expect to need this discussion. Loki, leave my girls alone."

He tried to not gawp, stunned. "I-hardly what I meant. Just a tok-" He cut himself off instantly. That was not what he meant, the weight of a 'token' being far more formal than what he'd intended to get across. It was not often he was jostled hard enough to forget his own tongue, and when it happened, it was often Frigga's cause. Now his words fell over each other in an awkward rush. "Just a polite offering, and through you I would have asked it to be granted anonymously. Nothing more! She is having difficulties with the other girls, and I thought-"

"I am fully aware of what is going on, Loki." Frigga took a breath and her voice gentled again. "It is kind of you to notice another's trouble. But they're my girls, and my responsibility." She looked away, the corners of her eyes crinkling wearily. "Leave the book with me and I'll see to it that it goes to her hand. But heed me on this, my son. Nothing more than that. Leave my girls be."

Loki licked his lips, realizing his skin felt stung under all the folds of his clothing. "Of course, Your Majesty."

Frigga looked back at the sound of his voice, quiet and unable to bury all the hurt he realized he felt. He could almost always manage it with Odin. Not so much with her. She rose from her bench and reached out to take his hand, giving it a squeeze when he hesitantly offered it. "I _will_ give my Kara your book. Not immediately, but I will. Don't worry at her meanwhile, please."

"Of course," he managed again, letting go of her and standing.

"To the library with you, then. And I am still in your debt, my son." She reached out to touch his face, one palm on either cheek, and she smiled at him to show there would be no anger, no disappointment left within her. The matter was small, to her, and the matter was over. To her. "Consider Libraum, he was a good old seal-forger. It's wearisome stuff, but the intricacy of his work shows the worth of that kind of meditative focus."

He nodded, and he smiled for Frigga as best he could, and when he left her solar, he did not look at Mette where she now tended the flowers that crawled over the railings, nor did he look anyone else in the eye for the rest of the day. He put all he felt in that dark place inside where he barricaded away all those other moments that hurt him, and he shut the door tightly on it as he moved on back towards the comforts of old and safe magic instead.

. . .

Night was falling. Loki didn't want to see it, didn't want to see the shadows deepen enough to let the ghosts swim in them. Not _that_ ghost, especially. The one that held his stolen secret and gave back none of their own. He paced through the halls before the prison instead, mulling over exactly how he would present the offer to Heimdall. Trying to get his tension in check.

There was exactly one way Loki could pull ahead of his hunter. The question would be what he was willing to risk to gain it. If Asgard's watchman could find a way to escape, he would in an instant. Too big a crack in the door and he would be gone - Loki's problems expanding from one hunter with his secret to a warrior with full right to his own vengeance.

He continued to pace, calculating his odds and finding them less than reassuring. Heimdall was older and wiser and intensely angry. But in the short term, Loki would get what he needed. The rest… could be mitigated.

The dark old thing in the back of his thoughts that rattled and raged reminded him that he _could_ kill Heimdall when this particular issue was over. Certainly he hadn't so far. Too great a benefit to keeping alive a man that could see like this one. Too many questions that could rise from his death.

And, whispered a smaller, quieter voice, he didn't actually want to. Unease tickled him. He'd had his chances before, and he let each of them pass. Frozen the man, locked him up, set him aside, taunted him. But Loki had not killed him, never that.

The dark old thing inside jeered at him for that. The hidden monster that he could be, the parts of him that struck out at Earth and watched the Chitauri fleet boil across the sky, pleased with the chaos he helped create.

 _And you failed, too_. Loki bared his teeth at nothing, no mirrors to stare into down in the dungeons. Only himself, and his own shadow mixed in with the rest of the dark. It was foolish to think of himself as pieces, try to share out responsibility. In the end, they were all only him.

Loki made himself stop pacing, looking back at the guard station that lay beyond the closed doors, then on towards the silent prison with its charge no doubt waiting for him inside. Heimdall could not see thoughts with those strange eyes of his, but, Loki thought, dour and with his face tight and strained, did he often need to? His own were plain enough this time, and hiding them wouldn't change them.

Whether or not those hidden thoughts changed _himself_ , that was a question he did not ever think to ask.


	11. Chapter 11

11.

. . .

"Gods be good, my prince. How often must you come and visit me?" Heimdall grinned down at him, grim and cheerful both, and his teeth sharply white in the yellowed gloom. "You look weary. You look weary much of the time now." The corners of his lips deepened, widened, eye teeth glinting like the fangs of a wolf. "Does the golden robe wear so heavy as that?"

Loki looked around for the stool he seldom used, an old thing left there by the guards for the comfort of the equally old king. He picked it up and nearly threw it to its place centered before the bars and the golden field and the man behind them both, and again he felt unreality strike him as he sat down, the bars tight around himself instead. Then he looked at Heimdall for a while, quiet, his head cocked and studying the man's grinning face long enough for that grin to falter just slightly.

In the distance, the creak of old stone and the steps of guards so distant they might as well be in another realm entire. The dungeons of Asgard were good ones, even these stone crypts. No moisture trickled, no damp chill to torment the nose. The stones around them here were cool and sometimes noisy, but even the worst cell held a little warmth. Loki took a breath, holding it, remembering long, slow months. Heimdall waited in his cell now for his chance at freedom almost as long as he had.

 _How oddly fitting_ , Loki thought as he looked into those glowing eyes, knowing clearly all the ways he could be setting a trap for himself in the end. Some buried part of him wondering if he cared anymore. "You're going to tell me where my hunter goes to ground."

Heimdall blinked once, slow and unimpressed.

"They might be able to move among the court during the day, unmasked and untouchable as I can prove nothing of them yet. I can feel the eyes on me hot enough to suspect that's true. And at night, they come and taunt at me to get what they want. But in between, they've got a lair. You can see it, because you're waiting for them to slip out of it and destroy me if I don't give them what they've come for. You're going to give that hidden place up to me."

"Why?"

"Because if you do, and I find them there, and I survive what I find, I'll give you back the sky. If I _don't_ survive, you no doubt will regain your freedom entire. I see no downsides for you in this."

Heimdall went still, paler palms pressed tight together as the strange eyes narrowed at him.

"Either a small victory or a grand one, that's your simple gamble. It will be another cell I put you in should I live, watchman. But no bars on this larger one. Only the force field, and above you, beyond another such field, the stars. In the eastern wings of the prison, where the walls begin to expand past the pala-"

"I know the cells you mean, prince. Older kings made them few for the winged ones they once warred with, to torture them with a wind they could not ride." Heimdall wrinkled his nose. "They smell fresh. The doors seal tight and the guards are silent and humorless, but the grass gets in anyway. Even the rain, just a little. Enough for that good clean smell."

"Yes." Loki stared at him, his face bare. "No weevils in the food, Heimdall, and the sky returned to you so that you may look easily again beyond Asgard itself. I am a bastard and I am your bastard tormentor, but I _keep my word_ when I choose to give it." He lifted his chin, defiant and holding this one truth out to be seen like a light. "This is my word and my oath. Give me my hunter, now. And I will give you back your stars."

Heimdall blinked, once. Then he lifted his chin to look at the grey stones above his head, the lengthening beard along his chin veiling his expression from view. Loki could never guess what the man was seeing when he stared like that, wouldn't bother to try. He stayed that way for a minute that stretched into another and more, watching a comet or a bird or simply thinking his secret thoughts. Then he lowered his face again and those eyes met Loki's plain. "It tempts me to reject your offer."

"I'm sure it does." Loki tilted his head, ironic. Heimdall didn't need him to outline the way the bargain was weighted, and not fully in Loki's own favor. "But?"

Dark lids narrowed around that strange light, and still Loki couldn't read his expression. "There are few sealed halls in our palace. We rebuild, or let them sit empty, or find some other use for these rooms. Only a few stay locked, and often for good or private reasons. Of these, one has been cracked to make a path for a shadow who cleverly keeps their face from that sky of mine."

"Where?"

Heimdall told him. A set of passages that went from private chambers to secret gardens, sealed for royal security scant centuries hence - and nestled within them, a set of empty and forgotten storage rooms.

Loki nodded, then smiled for his prisoner, small and dour. "I would say you have my thanks, but you wouldn't want that from me me. But you have my oath, for whatever you think that's worth, and it _will_ be paid full. One way, or another."

"I will pray for the best outcome in this matter. Prince." Heimdall bowed his head, serene and silent mockery, and he stayed that way as Loki swept out of the prison, laughing bitterly in response.

. . .

 _Ago_ ~

Loki watched the evening star twinkle near the purpled edge of Asgard's horizon, feeling the night's breeze trace itself over his bare shoulder. Without thinking, he tugged the thin silk sheet over himself a little more and kept looking at the sky instead of back into the cozier room with its single candle.

Not _his_ room, of course. He kept an unspoken but equally unbreakable rule of privacy. One thing that was his alone, guarded jealously as best he could. He couldn't keep family from crossing the threshold, didn't try, but they all at least knew to speak first before touching his door. Palace staff waited patient before being allowed in where he kept his books and his collections, and strewn among them those magical experiments that, within the confines of the palace, only he and Frigga understood.

But the palace was vast, and a prince could call anyplace mostly private. Within reason.

Amora shifted on the borrowed bed, and he glanced back to see the curve of a milky, lily-toned hip bared to the night air, and the rest of her underneath the silk. Then he glanced back at the sky. "Most men sleep after, Your Highness," she said, amused. "Even you have, nights before this one. You seem taken elsewhere this eve, pulled elsewhere as if by an ox."

He knew where he was. Or rather, where his body would soon be once after his thoughts finished scouted that vast line of the dead and took a night's rest. The front of the war, the now-scorched roads that led to Karnilla's dug-in demesne. The boundaries of Nornheim were written in fresh blood.

He heard Amora roll over, knew how she lay on her back in the way he liked and realized that now he didn't care. "Tomorrow for you then. I know you're leaving." She sounded mournful. "Damn this war."

"Your family's information has been most helpful to the tacticians." He sounded neutral, almost cold. Couldn't stop it, didn't bother to try to fake the warmth. "It's a shame Thor is not at the line instead this season. I would be better remaining with them, the planners, but we need someone to carry the colors. Morale has been wounded too much to let the soldiers fight alone, we need the people to stay strong a while longer."

Yes, Thor. Lorelei's charms finally won his eye, at least partially, and though there had been some mutterings, he'd set aside some of his war parties and held the front now and again on Odin's word more regally than before. A small but remarkable shift. Loki couldn't put his finger on why he felt so unsettled about it. He approached one of Thor's good friends at first to ploy for another opinion - slender young Fandral - and gave up when Fandral suggested it was good old fashioned envy they were all feeling.

That wasn't it. But Loki didn't know what else it could be. Certainly he couldn't ask Thor himself - he was busy of late with one thing or another.

Something tensed hard in the side of his face, a muscle meant for grimacing, twisting his lip as he thought and chewed at the inside of it and looked out at the world he knew instead. Realizing it wasn't always as familiar as he believed, and hadn't been for a long time.

"Well, Thor is another hearty young man. If he finally wins my sister, well, 'tis what it be. As hot-blooded as he is, it's a turn he might need. Even in war, a soldier deserves a rest." A cooler undertone under Amora's words. He almost turned to look at her, settled for a scant glance instead, a trace of his eyes across hers. He knew the sisters still had their own little war between them - and he'd come into Amora's targeting the last few months even suspecting that hot jealousy of theirs might have been a factor in why she'd come to him. The runner-up. Second place.

He would have liked to have been wrong at first, but Loki found that assuming the worst preemptively soothed most wounds. It didn't matter much to him, then, the more he'd watched her bare face as she slept and realized there was nothing here he truly wanted. That he was not what she secretly wanted. Lies needed life to work, and sleep often tore away even the best mask.

Amora shifted again and he saw her, the spill of unbound gold hair across a silky brocade pillow, a lithe, bare form slipping further out from under the sheets. She was beautiful, and she wasn't what he wanted, and he suspected also that mattered very little to her for she felt entirely the same.

Something was off. He looked at the dark places between the stars and wondered if that was true, or if once again _he_ was off, trapped out of joint, and thus overthinking a matter of nothingness.

"If I knew you less than I did, I'd think you dreamed of some other pretty girl in between these thoughts of war." The tease hid a pry underneath. Amora was a clever thing. She tried to pick at him every time time they met, tried to figure out for herself how he thought. Like he was a clockwork toy. Sometimes he even let her crack a seal of his to watch her grasp for that new information, but only small surface victories. The rest of him stayed down deep, where his doors all lined up inside his soul. If one such lock rattled at her statement, he didn't acknowledge it. The last festival and all its moments, pleasant and not, were now well in the past. She kept teasing him. "Don't tell me it's Lorelei you dream of."

Loki snorted, readjusting the sheet across him as if it were a loose, old-fashioned tunic. Finally he turned to look at her, leaning his back against the cool stone of the sill. "Thor and I are not quite so competitive with each other as you two."

He hadn't meant it as a knife, but he could instantly sense the chill that rippled under her skin regardless. A tug of her hand resettled the blanket as she sat up slightly, burying some of her curves under bunched silk again. Amusingly, Loki doubted she was aware of that particular tell. They were touchy with each other, the sisters, but the boundaries of that heat… he hadn't known their vastness. She was not the only one that pried at another's mind during these visits. Here was a clue he hadn't been seeking. He tilted his head politely, thinking carefully before he spoke. "In any case, Amora, I'm only thinking of the stars. And the war. Nothing else." Not the _entire_ truth, but most of it, and good enough to pass.

She looked at him, artfully dozy through half-lidded eyes, and she laid back amidst the pillows again. The offer was clear, but he felt nothing he liked but that good cool breeze from the window behind him. "You'll be writing, of course. And you won't be out there for ages, I expect. Weeks, maybe. A few months. And then we can visit again." Amora paused, sounding distant. "This war can't last forever. There's simply not enough resources. I never thought a witch queen could stand so long on an open battlefield against the All-Father."

He continued to watch her, those almost mechanical thoughts of his still grinding on. No, it truly couldn't. He realized now that he wanted to go, in a way. Not because he was going to take any pleasure in the war itself, but because the walls of the castle felt too close lately and he wanted to get away. Find some open air, and stand in it a while. Feel something besides the ticking of his own mind. Pleasure had been a distraction, but only that. It left an emptiness behind, a game with no prize that would give him joy.

Amora watched him back, realizing she was not going to get anything else she wanted from him tonight, and had the art to not look disappointed. Loki gave her the best opening he could. "There'll be more in the morning," he told her. "Word from the war council. Another line of refugees coming in on the eastern road. Not many this time." He frowned and didn't say why. He didn't need to.

Amora sniffed, showing a trace of distress. "Why do innocents get caught in battle so often? Why do they pay so much of the cost?"

"Because in war, warriors sometimes forget to look for them." That odd feeling came over him again, distant and cold and alien. He glance up at the small red stars, the ones that made up the heart of some of those constellations of legends and gods he'd grown up with. "We forget, and we trample them underneath."

"Haunting words, my prince." He heard her shuffle gently, her hands finding her dress and the sound of her hair being tamed back into something that belied her secret evening. She took the hint, made it her own."I best slip off, then, and rest while I can ere they arrive."

He felt her hands pass over the skin of his shoulders, and the brush of her lips across his temple, and then she was gone, leaving him just as alone as he'd felt while she was there - if now a little warmer.

And in the sky, he didn't find the answers he was looking for.


	12. Chapter 12

12.

. . .

Loki shoved aside the flap of the command field tent without a word as the guard stationed there continued to stand at rigid attention. He ripped off his belt of weapons and tossed it onto a camp cushion before tearing a glance almost as violent across the two adjutants, the old jarl and war-chief who ran this edge of the war, and another of Thor's younger friends, Hogun, who sat silently in the corner.

As prince and direct representative of the crown, Loki held rank in this tent. Rarely did he act like it in favor of better counsel - but his temper threatened to boil. "We're barely holding the riverland, and when I say _bare_ I mean a scant handful of men go down tonight and Karnilla's loyalists are going to be all over our arses for breakfast." He shook his head, frustrated. "Where are those gods-damned reinforcements?"

The jarl, Ulf, son of Frode, shifted where he sat on a low folding stool next to the tactical table. His armor, heavy and gilded and somehow older than he, clanked uncomfortably. A good mind, but he rode out from the tent seldom now. Unlike some of the more heated warriors, Loki thought nothing less of the old man for that. To him, maps and supply lines and raw knowledge were as vital in a fight as steel. "We have another day before they cross from the northern camp, Your Highness. Had a problem with the skiffs. Sabotage, they think."

" _We_ don't _have_ a day."

Ulf bowed his head, acknowledging the obvious and speaking as calmly as he could. "Then we must somehow make a day."

Loki snapped a gesture at one of the adjutants. Not for anything useful, but for a drink of wine while he thought. To calm him, if nothing else. He sipped at the goblet given him, shaking his head and thinking unwillingly of the scene he had just left. A brace of three of Karnilla's sorcerous loyalists, with a dozen well-armed men at each of their sides. Less than fifty total, and yet with better control of the terrain and some inner resource of power, they'd routed a hundred man garrison and nearly pushed back to this camp itself.

Most of those men were bleeding, near useless until the field medics saw to them. Loki had ridden with a team of elite outriders to try and cut off the chase that threatened to ensure the men died outright. It meant an open skirmish, not his preference or his speciality, and the smell of burned aether and scorching flesh stayed hot in his nose, nauseating him. He drank half the goblet, still thinking.

"They've refocused on this line of the front." Hogun spoke rarely. When he did, it was worth listening. Of Thor's newer allies, Loki found he liked Hogun the best. He hadn't argued when Thor pleaded with him to allow one of his own band to ride out to the front at his side. "Means they see something here. Either that growing weakness at the river, or something worth taking."

Meaning _him_. Karnilla going for a royal prisoner was an old trick and an effective one, having nearly snatched up Odin himself long ago in her first press against Asgard. She'd tried for Thor once, too, a few years back. Although that attempt cost her damn near half her fielded troops at that tower when the elder prince released the inner berserker that made him already so damned formidable, despite his youth. She hadn't tried again, not with him. But so long as it was the house of Asgard versus the Witch Queen, royal necks were always going to be a prize worth gunning for. Dead or alive.

However. No one beyond the camp's leadership was supposed to know Loki was here yet - the jarl's closest men, Hogun, and the palace alone held that secret. Not any soldier, though he'd been at camp for almost a week overseeing things quietly. Even afield today, Loki had masked his appearance somewhat, those warriors with him never knowing their efficient, knife-wielding backup was a prince and a sorcerer in his own right. Loki looked at Hogun over the goblet, then set it down. "Either way, that means Karnilla knows what we know here. And that is troubling to consider."

Hogun lifted a shoulder in a casual, agreeable shrug. "Too small a group for spies. The camp itself is too busy for most eyes to follow."

Loki nodded. If there _was_ some kind of an information leak, it wasn't coming from this tent.

That meant the palace was somehow the source, increasing the chances that the intended target was himself. And that also meant there was nothing he could do about that leak yet. He set the problem aside for later study, and he reminded himself to send a missive back as fast he could.

It also meant… Loki pushed the empty goblet aside with considerable more patience than he'd had on entry, balancing his palms on the edges of the tactical table and giving it a good lean. "It's an old trick, but a good one." He stared at one of the small blue tokens representing Karnilla's local garrison.

"My prince?" Jarl Ulf craned his neck forward, studying him.

"If Hogun and I are on the same wavelength here, then the news our enemy is operating off of is intensely valuable to them - but also not that fresh. _They_ might not know how long we've got to wait for reinforcements." He looked up from the table, gesturing at the appropriate icons as he spoke. "We need to plump the front line on the other side of the river immediately, fully staff the towers on either watershed and get a patrol cycle up. Make it _look_ like we were just refreshed. Anyone in a ten kilometer radius that we can slap spare armor on and stand straight dusk to dawn to dusk. If we look menacing enough, they might not strike. They took losses, too, these last few days. Just not as many as we wanted. They'll poke our borders for a better, more efficient opportunity, some other way to draw what they want out."

Hogun nodded, silent. He leaned forward, pushing three civilian tokens in turn with a single finger, then looked at the jarl. "Here. Farmer encampments, dug in despite the evacuations. They've been good men, they'll stand for our war so long as they need not die for it today."

Loki snapped his fingers and spoke directly to them both as Ulf grinned. "Perfect. And I want whatever warriors we can spare at each point, so that if this _does_ go sideways we can get the civilians out first. They don't pay for our mistakes. Not for this."

Ulf raised himself out of his camp chair with an old man's mutter. "I'll ride out personally and gather them up. I know back trails to shorten the route and no few of the men themselves. Stubborn lot, but they see me and they'll do this for us. I'll get them lined up and backslapped into a good king's pride by eventide."

"Take a brace of guards with you, Jarl Ulf, for my sake if not yours." Loki moved out of the way with a nod of his head.

. . .

The plan was working. But not perfectly - the ruse was nearly flushed out shortly after midnight when a cloaked scouting group with a sorceress riding lead felt their vinegar and took a shot at one of the river towers. Being one of the more crucial locations, it was staffed with more of the remaining healthy and rested warriors than some of the other pressure points along this part of the front, and further, to their credit, the farmer men in borrowed armor refused to flee. Golden spears were not pitchforks, but they understood the worth of the pointy end well enough to hold the line until help could arrive.

Loki kept gloved hands tight on the reins of his horse, following close behind the tense squadron captain as they galloped towards the river. Without many other options left, he'd made it plain to the young man in gilded plate and leather _exactly_ who he was, and what he damn well intended to do when they got to the skirmish. No time for subtlety, risks to himself be damned, and he'd left group command to the captain otherwise. This was going to be heavy blades and hot fire. His job was going to be going straight for the sorceress in charge while the rest of the relief mopped up the mundane attackers.

The captain's mare gave a sharp whinny as the animal detected stress and blood in the air. They were close, just the other side of the tree line and across a riverbank of smooth old stones and moss that had once been a popular place for children to play. Loki realized his teeth were bared, the cold night wind whipping sharp across his face.

 _You've not yet seen war,_ whispered Frigga in his ear. _Battle, but not war_. The outrider chase scant hours before. The lines of refugees flooding into the palace fields. These images haunted. He'd already fought demons and flame elementals in Muspelheim, rode off Dwarven exiles and a pirate band of Kree, all of this at his brother's side, but this battle now felt far closer to his own veins. Those were distant enemies, fading figures the mind could file away as amorphous Other in an attempt to rationalize what it saw.

 _These_ enemies were born Asgardian, the bloody shroud of the known quantity. They could have been people he met personally, sorceresses and hedge witches that had corresponded once, peacefully, with Frigga herself. He swallowed, cold through the breastbone. The hooves of his horse struck water and he looked down to be sure of the beast's footing as they charged on towards the noise of battle. Instead he caught sight of a body in the river, someone - he couldn't tell if in life they had been friend or foe - floating face down with their back torn open. The water around them was black from blood, reflecting nothing but a moonless midnight.

If the leader of the war band had a shot at him, they would take it. It wasn't the wisest, most tactical move to personally ride out with the group, but Loki rationalized it to both Hogun and the Jarl for two reasons. One, he was the most capable of stopping another magic user quickly, before they could do deeper damage to the fording than Asgard could pay. And two, if they got whiff of him personally afield, they'd almost certainly change focus away from the handful of warriors and civilians and converge on him instead.

Worth the risks. And yet his palms felt slick and cold inside his gloves. Much could go wrong.

The captain shouted a command as they struck the other side of the riverbed and the relief party began to fan into a jagged line, shield and spear riders at the front, archers and knife-men behind. And Loki, right behind the captain. He muttered something sharp of his own, slashing a quick gesture in the air to place an almost invisible ward in front of the captain. He couldn't protect the whole line, but he could armor his point group, where they were virtually begging the attackers to focus on.

The smell of magic would be a calling card for the enemy sorceress, to boot. His jaw tightened further, bringing the ache of tension to his face. He realized he arrived at the camp not fully ready for this, but it no longer mattered. By the time the knife came into his hand, he had to be.

It happened even quicker than he realized. He smelled the aether heating up first, then heard the crack of growing power. Not electricity, not fire, something else. Wild and almost sickly. Forbidden powers, things that came with deadly cost, and things that Karnilla didn't judge as harshly as some in their discipline. In war, all weapons came to bear at need. He braced himself on instinct, then realized that wasn't going to be enough. He rolled off the horse and hit the damp grass with both heels, shouting a word at the stallion to get it to speed up and out of the blast zone as he strengthened his shields.

Not quick enough. The flash struck, turning half the poor beast to ash despite his own wards. A scream of fear rippled through the line as leftover energy rushed hot over exposed flesh, wounding them. But Loki had indeed been the target - the sorceress laying in wait for a rescue team with a building first strike and finding a better focus for her work in him. He went unscathed under his shields, took no time in grieving his steed for now though his stomach roiled at the smell of cooked horseflesh. He ran instead, finding shelter in the lee of tall trees and going _dim_ from all eyes, mundane and magical, while the captain regrouped the troops.

He scanned what he could with his own eyes shut for a risky minute, mentally following the trace of that blast back to a fortified copse behind the line of attackers. Smart sorceress. She dug in for safety, and had eyes on the fight entire - but by the trace of her next building assault, she hadn't spotted him looking for her yet. _Too_ focused on her work, another sort of magical danger.

Loki grinned, animal reflex, no cheer in it. Then he took off on a tree-covered route that would bring him up on her flank within a minute. Surprise was going to be his first weapon in killing her now, fast, while she searched to see if he'd survived her assault.

The athame in his hand was going to be his second, slicing her lifeforce off from the pool of poisoned magic she tied herself to.

. . .

"We could have used her for information, my prince." Jarl Ulf paused his horse at the edge of the copse, where Loki was now studying the body of his opponent in the rising mist of the dawn. "Alive, I hasten to add."

Loki shook his head. "She wouldn't have given any. She knew capture would be synonymous with death eventually. Even if that capture happened, she would have suicided before we decided for her." He gently tugged at one of her sleeves to show the man the elf-scorch runes embedded there. The meaning would be lost on the jarl, but nonetheless they were important to what he meant. "Her loyalty wasn't just to the Witch Queen herself, but to a kind of magic most of us consider anathema. Not just blood magic, Jarl Ulf. Soul magics, corrupted bleak. That's why she was with this scout force. It's harder to sense for that, even if you're trained to watch for mages. Makes for a damn good surprise attack, and you saw well it did."

He looked up to see the Jarl studying him doubtfully. An old warrior, and though wiser than many, he'd ridden with All-Father Bor during Karnilla's last incursion. Asgard's fear of magic still lingered in many, and though Loki couldn't fault it, he already tired of it. "I'll defer to you then, my prince."

Loki turned back to the body, studying the old sorcery written in its fading aura, frowning. His mother would have to look over the notes he was taking. Bad work all around. Then something important occurred to him. "Defer to me also in this - the Captain needs acclaim for the victory here, but not him alone. Every farmer that stood, that never broke and ran. They ought be held in honor as warriors in their own right, and named heroes when this is over."

He heard the creak of a leather saddle, and an equally creaky, pleased voice. "No need to defer, Your Highness. I must agree with you entirely, and I'll see to it straightaway." Then the voice hesitated. "But I must also say I'm ruddy stunned with how fast this matter escalated. I fear for your safety already, and suggest I send back to the castle and say that while your presence is of great value to our men, I cannot bear the risk of this occurring again."

Loki rolled the sleeve back down, then also gently closed the dead sorceress's eyes before the sun rose full. An enemy, and a self-cursed mage, but it wasn't in him to deny the dead some peace. He thought, then he said, "I'd rather you didn't do that, Jarl Ulf."

"You want to _stay_ in this fuckin' mess?" Astonishment took long-trained courtesy out of his voice and put the coarseness of the old blood back in to replace it.

Loki found he had to fight off an entirely inappropriate laugh. In doing so, he took a moment more than he needed, thinking next of what he actually meant and what he would say instead.

The field horrified him. There were bodies strewn from here to the river, and it was not going to end soon. And yet, no. He didn't want to go back. He bit his lip, studying the corpse still laid before him. His duty was to learn to face war, and survive it, and understand the worth and need of that horror, if there were any to be understood.

And back at the palace, all that waited for him was Amora, another piece of his recent life he knew he didn't really want.

In truth, he wished he _could_ go somewhere else. Any place in the galaxy. But there had never been anywhere else for him but the palace, so, very well. The lessons of war - and meanwhile, sniff out the trail of whoever, whatever, had let slip his role here at the front. The list of suspects could be narrowed quickly, even from the distant camp. "Yes, Jarl Ulf. Exactly so. I intend to stay in this fucking mess, for as long as I need to."

. . .

Loki used the old trick of _dimness_ instead of full invisibility to skulk his way through the palace to the sealed chambers Heimdall grudgingly gave up to him, saving what he could of his energy in case matters went sour. He assumed they would. Surprise was not enough of a guarantee, not for this stalk. But he might at least corner the masked hunter, and in so doing either win a short battle - should he be _that_ lucky - or find some leverage against them to ease the rope around his neck.

Going dim was less effective, potentially left more of a trail, and even someone with mundane senses could catch him out if he stood in the middle of a gloomy room and they were paying attention. The hunter would. But at this hour, the gloaming before full night, they might not be in the lair and he could investigate, perhaps lay traps, without that risk becoming too costly.

He found the opened latches of the old corridor easily where they lurked behind a haphazard looking but perfectly cavernous stack of crates and folded tapestries, inspecting the entire outline of the door to see if the hunter left methods to see if the door had been disturbed and not finding anything. The latch opened easily, freshly greased for silence, and the passage behind led to an area that once connected to private spaces of the Queen's own tower. Hence the sealing, centuries ago.

Loki wrinkled his nose and inspected the dusty shadows, noticing how carefully much of the gloom was untouched. Even those soft shoes left only the barest trail, off-kilter and messy, possible to pass for the bellies of rats or some other vermin that thrived even in the grandest of realms. He followed the same path best he could for several careful minutes, leaving almost no trail of his own and carrying no light to give him away. In the distance, he could mark the first gleam of his goal, a flicker of at least one candle left behind in the first storage room he'd seen on the old map he referred to before starting. Before he reached the bend in the hall that would show him the room, Loki checked himself carefully, paranoid that his knives were still at his hip, that another still hid at his thigh, and other small tools that could save him, should he corner himself here.

Then he slipped into that first storage room, and stopped, stunned.

Not one candle. A narrow shelf of them, each fatty long-burning stub carefully maintained in tempered glass ornaments. Beneath the glow was the shrine. Another shelf, this one of memories and offerings. A small gold cup of honeyed mead, a vintage his nose recognized instantly as one of Frigga's favorites. A beautifully carved elderwood clasp, of the sort she would often give away to ladies and girls for their braids. A slice of fresh bread taken from the palace kitchens. Scraps of blue silks, dried flowers, braided ribbons. On a cleaned box nearby he saw a few tapestries the queen had woven and laid aside when he was young, thinking they were not fine enough for display. A booklet of bardic verse, a thin tome of cantrips he knew well, though this was a different copy than the one he recalled.

Loki sagged against the frame of the door, unsure what to think, and the _dim_ peeled away from him as his thoughts swirled, entirely unfocused by the forceful presence of the dead queen in that secret shrine. Someone had known her well to display their grief in this way.

Someone else still hurt.

In the corner of the room, a black-leg clad leg and its soft booted foot shifted. The hunter lifted flung that leg over the other, not rising from the chair they sat in.

That _she_ sat in. Realizing what he'd done, knowing he'd foolishly left himself vulnerable out of sheer surprise and his own renewed grief, Loki turned his gaze from the shrine to examine his hunter fully, unmasked, studying him right back with a coldly serene expression on her face.

"I know you," he said through numbed lips. He could feel nothing but the frozen shock that coursed his body.

The hunter tilted her face at him, mock-polite, dark hair neatly braided close to better fit under that mask. Lips that turned in easily for subtle sarcasm creased in a grin that was a threat and he knew just how fast, just how graceful she could move if she struck now. "I would be deeply surprised to discover you yet remember any of our names. We were small women, Your Highness. Fleeting memories."

He did, though. He had never quite forgotten, but nor had he allowed the name close to the front of his thoughts in ages. Not since the rebuke he'd earned from Frigga for that one stray thought, long ago. "You're the Lady Kara. You served at the Queen's hand for centuries." Loki felt no satisfaction at the tiniest flinch that crossed her narrow, tense face. "I remember you very well."


	13. Chapter 13

13.

. . .

Kara didn't move from her chair. She seemed coiled in it, visible tension rippling under her skin like wolf fur in winter, though after a second she brought up a hand to lean her chin on it as if she held a small court of her own. "I'll be damned," she said, soft and thoughtful. "I might be regardless, but that's one bluff fair called."

Loki glanced at the shrine again, then crossed to it, looking at each of the small offerings again in turn. Wondering how long they'd been there. How many years had she kept these things, only now to leave them under the candles to honor what was lost?

"Don't touch anything." Her voice turned into sharp ice, though he didn't sense her move. Not yet.

"I won't. On my word."

"Way I hear it told from those that even now think you're dead, your word is not worth all that much." Cold, still. And that strange, flat neutrality underneath. Like a form of control hiding whatever she might have actually said or felt. "A man that secretly throws down a king, and for what gain? Has it made it you feel better about whatever it is that ails you?"

Loki ran a palm over the candles, making them flicker, feeling the heat build in his skin. "I find it curious that your first response to your discovery was to threaten and blackmail me for your own goals. Why not simply throw me down at your first opportunity? Reveal my life and my ruse?"

"Might do, Your Highness. This night's not over yet."

"But you didn't do it right away." He looked at her, closing his hand around the warmth in his palm. "You want Odin. Only Odin. Why?"

"I don't _owe_ you a why." He could see her eyes, fine and clear, glittering bright at him at the sound of the old king's name, but she didn't move. The tension was back, stronger. "I don't see that I should freely _grant_ you a why."

Loki licked his lips and said nothing, his fingernails tracing one of those thick lines that ran across his palm, the ones old mystics said could map a lifetime. Rot and nonsense - his palms showed no jagged falls and snarls of madness and the secret that had ruined him. Just pale flesh, itself a lie. There were a few boxes not strewn with old memories, and he found a sturdy looking one to sit on. Watching her. Recognizing that tension was entirely built on fury and grief, now that he could see her face. Only Odin, she craved. Something began to coil tight in his guts, and he think he knew the answer to his question.

She stared back, still coiled, and the gloved fingers of her other hand were dug tight against the fabric of the armrest.

"Why?" he finally asked again, seeing something familiar enough in that face to know that if he pressed one more time, she would answer him. "Why this revenge?"

Unable to resist the fury building behind eyes unwillingly damp, Kara spat the answer he expected, clawing at him with it. "It's _his_ fault." Grief was fought back with a feral snarl. "Her loss is _his_ fault."

He nodded, his chest tight, knowing a deadlier secret yet. "You weren't a handmaiden. What were you?"

Kara coughed out a laugh over her furious grief, brittle. "Oh, I was a handmaiden, Your Highness. Don't mistake. I poured wine and served food and carried messages and listened cheerfully to noblemen. I could dance just fine with young and frightened lords who needed a calming partner at their first king's court, and I knew all the curtsies and courtesies."

"Very well, you weren't _just_ a handmaiden. What else were you?"

She looked away from him, staring up into the dusty corner of the storage room's ceiling as if all the past was snarled there. Having forced out the secret of her anger, there wasn't much point in hiding the rest. "I was the Queen's weapon, and I was her shield, prince. Since just before Karnilla's second bleeding war. And in her last hour where she needed me the most, I was not there. I was not _there_ to stop that elven bastard's filthy blade from tearing her open, and it was the order and the fault of the king whose skin you wear in daylight." Her gaze crawled back to him, hot enough to make her seem on the fringe of some rational break. "Give him to me, if he lives. Keep your beshitted throne if you must, I don't think I care. And if he does not live, _tell me_ , so I can _fucking well_ go back to mine own life, such as it be."

Loki leaned back on the box, splaying his hands behind himself for support, thinking that of all the ways to gain the upper hand on his own safety, this was far from what he had in mind. Still - he wouldn't answer. He couldn't. The answers themselves were an all new danger if he were not careful, and he found he had so many new questions. It had been a long time since he'd looked at those memories…

She laughed again to interrupt his thoughts, wounded and brutally hostile, and then she shook her head. "My Gods. You absolute _bastard_. You're not going to answer me."

"Not yet," he said, temporizing, realizing he wasn't angry any longer, and only passingly afraid of the portent behind her rage. Grief hung thick in this room. That much was a thing he could still feel true. It paused him, a little, as it kept her weighted down in her own chair. "I suppose there _were_ secrets left in Asgard, after all."

"A few. Did you really survive all this time thinking you knew all there ever was to know of the Nine Realms? Hah, no wonder you cracked whole." Another brittle laugh. She shifted, and he could see the knives glinting at her waist. The thin braided cord of a silvery garrote. Clasps and fine chains looped near to hand, and he knew Kara wasn't a fighter. Not like the warriors, not even like the sanctified Valkyries. She hunted from the dark, and she would kill if she had to strike. The Queen's blade, a careful tool meant for the right moments. No, he'd had no idea there had been such a dangerous secret kept so close to the family.

But then, for all the wisdom and pragmatic efficiency Frigga had carried within her, he realized he wasn't surprised. Memories came back, clicking into place, things making new sense even where the old hurts still whispered behind closed doors.

 _Stay away from my girls_.

"I wondered," he said, still ticking through those faded pages. Everything _before_. Before the chains and the cells, before his fall, before his cursed self-discovery, out there in the grey of his mind and behind the doors where he'd tried to leave it all. "You served her a long time. Longer than any of the other girls. A few centuries at most for them, just enough to make a nice name and reputation. Like that Brigida, off with her useless merchant lord. But I remember you in the crowds, just before…" He trailed off. Before Thor's failed coronation, before Jotunheim. "I didn't know you were yet serving her at the end." When he was imprisoned. He hadn't noticed her in that throne room, the last open space before entering his cage. Odin's sentencing had been a close affair, and he himself had been, to put it mildly, somewhat narrowly focused.

Her fingers went _pick-pick-pick_ at the fabric of the armrest, studying him, and he wondered if she snapped if she would go for his throat outright, or something just as vital and more apt to leave him without a way to strike back.

"You were there, then. When the realm thought I'd died." He didn't know what he was trying to find out. Prying. Prying for anything to help him understand, but he didn't know what he was looking for.

"I was at her side when Odin told her what happened to her son, and it was me there watching a queen grieve for months within the mask she wore for all others." Kara stared at him, still furious. "I was there as she discovered you were still alive, after all. And what harm that now meant to others."

Loki watched her fingers writhe, feeling oddly calm. Logically, the woman would despise him. Maybe even hate. He laughed once, soft, wondering how badly he wanted to be sure. One more enemy on the pile, the known quantity of all his destructions. Oh what he _could_ say - but he wouldn't. Instead, he goaded. It was safer his way, he thought. "And now instead of protecting Asgard in her name, you'll light me on fire for your vengeance."

He saw eye teeth peek from barely parted lips. "I hardly think _you_ get to judge another's motives."

"Oh, but as you've noticed, the throne room is mine own. False or no, I hold it, and I hold the spear of kings. _Judging_ is my express privilege so long as I'm astride that golden seat." He smiled, disarming and pleasant and utterly false, watching her fingers fall still and not sure what that meant.

Kara sagged back against her seat, the tension fading. He hadn't expected that. She studied him with a look of raw disbelief. She shook her head again, a slow gesture, looking away from him into the darkness of the next storage room. Where she bunked, he suspected. An armory and a bedroll, and maybe a little more stolen food. Beyond that, more maze to take her where she needed. He understood now how she was slipping away. How she'd skirted him that first encounter. "You _want_ to be hated."

Loki regained too much control of himself over the last several minutes to look stricken, but he felt the blow dig deep and sharp into his intestines regardless.

"You stupid fool. I thought you were the smart prince, gods know the queen believed it at every turn. I taunted you with it, even." She puffed a laugh, her gaze wandering every stone that made up the walls around them. "Not often I overestimate. Bright stars, is that really what all this was about? Stamp out every good memory in this place, make sure you've made every enemy, let the kingdom fall down around your ears because you got _hurt_?" Another laugh, weak. The hand that had been her chin's rest now unfolded to rub across her lower lip. "No one truly hated you then, Prince Loki. No one, until you decided to go out and make sure everyone did. My gods."

His fingers were cold. This was somehow out of his control again. Her hands were restless, but still, they weren't going for knives.

She wasn't going to kill him, he realized. He simply was not the target, would not become one. Unless he pressed the issue. He didn't understand why she wouldn't lash at him directly, so he watched her instead, absorbing her irritation with him until he felt as if it was his own. "I find that hard to believe."

"Of course you do. With the way you warred with the other girls alone, I always assumed you expected everyone's out carrying a grudge against you." Her hand left her face, snapping a gesture of frustration into the air.

He snapped back. "And I also find it hard to believe you think you know me even an _inch_."

Kara laughed, honest and light and gaily ringing it through her little lair. Familiar sound. It stung at him. "Oh, I won't claim that I know all your thoughts, but for shit's sake, I _definitely_ know you're not stupid enough to think we servants don't notice what all goes on in the palace. You were using dozens of staff as some sort of ad hoc intel service for centuries. Not us handmaidens, though. The queen would have put paid to that."

 _That_ was true. He felt heat crawling along his throat, choking him from inside.

"Who watches the watchers? There's an obvious riddle. Sometimes it's a fat ruddy circle, Your Highness. We all watch each other. No secrets among the secret-keepers." Now Kara sounded amused, her own fury with him fading again. At least for the moment. Loki had the unshakeable sense of having lost yet another fight, set aside once again as no threat to her. "Do me a small favor, would you, Your Highness?"

He studied her eyes, glinting that faded but still watchful shade of dark blue at him, and he said nothing.

"Get out of here, now. Leave this space or I will. And bear in mind that my threat still stands, even if you should think to call the guards down here. You might have found me somehow, but _they_ won't."

Did it, though, that threat? He licked his lips, now dry enough that he almost felt the cracks forming in the skin, and realized the anger was leaking back in. "Else what, if I don't tell you what you want? What can you really do to me, if you think what I seek is being hated?"

Kara snorted, sounding weary, and when she spoke, it was as if she was speaking to some other conversation entirely. "You remembered once to be kind, Prince. I never forgot that, either. Take that mercy back, just once, and get out of here before I change my mind."

Soundlessly, she rose from her chair and disappeared into that other room, sealing it behind her with a firm _click_.

. . .

 _Ago_ ~

Loki kept his hands on the maps and gave away nothing more of what he felt than a fast lick of his lips. "What _exactly_ do you mean, there's been a delay?"

The palace messenger shifted his weight, hands clasped around the written version of the words he'd been given to deliver. "His Highness, Prince Thor, will be unable to rejoin the front for several more days, but assures his brother and camp command that he will be here before the next major engagement."

"The next major engagement could be in _twenty ruddy minutes_ for all he fucking knows." Loki's fingers began to curl around the edges of those maps, crinkling them as his short cropped hair masked his eyes from the messenger. The new adjutant standing in the corner stiffened in surprise, but only him. Jarl Ulf, on his stool nearby, only grunted. Delicacy and royal comportment had long since begun sliding sideways. Battlefields had no time for silken language, and he was nothing if not adaptable. Loki took a breath, calming himself. It was not the messenger's fault. "Did he happen to give a reason for the delay?"

"I- Your Highness." The messenger shook his head, frightened. "I'm afraid I don't know. I was unable to speak with the prince directly. The letter was passed to me by the hand of the Lady Lorel-"

" _Shit_." Loki hissed the coarse word, the heat rising through his ribcage and into his throat. Anger refreshed, but under it was that acid worry and suspicion. This was unlike his brother. The front was holding, and even without immediate access to the tactician's table back at the palace, Loki's own sharp mind was managing a handful of victories he supposed he was proud of. But there was still that instinctive sense that _something_ was deeply off, and had been for a while. _It is_ not _mere jealousy, Fandral_.

Immediately after that first skirmish at the river ford, Loki sent off a barrage of missives to the Queen and to the King's court. To her, the notes on the dangerous magics at work here, observations on command structure, and coded but equally plainer versions of his concerns. To the court, his information was more terse. There was a leak, and it was in the palace, and there damn well wasn't much he could do about it from the distant camps with bandit raids and enemy sorceresses in his hair approximately every six hours. He had learned to sleep in forty-five minute bursts, and could now both fall asleep and wake up on a clipped silver coin.

The official response was a mixture of clinical concern and a more worrisome undertone of _yes, thank you, we'll take it under advisement, but of course it's foolish to fear the royal house has been undermined by spies, you silly young prince. Now go off and play war like a good lad_.

Parchment started to tear under his nails. It wasn't the pride in their own capability he minded, that was Asgard's way. It was the _dismissal_.

Fortunately the Queen's responses were more invested. He knew she was sharp, and that in the end it was her that had finer sway over the All-Father than many of the old war-band leaders.

But this, now. Thor drawn off in a rush of skirts away from a battle and all the thirst he could usually muster for it. Entirely out of character for him - and he'd been distant a while as it stood.

Something was _wrong_.

Loki looked at the maps and nodded, then straightened up, his face now calm. The suspicions had a shape. They had skirts and pleasant smiles and he'd dismissed it as too obvious, too simple, too loose a conjecture to fix on, but now he wondered fresh again, thinking they might have finally overplayed. Lorelei, keeping one brother from the front with a pretty lure. The better, more deadly warrior, a weapon they needed out here _now,_ before the gathering storm within Nornheim picked out another wounded place to strike.

And Amora, who'd known almost exactly where Loki was. At the palace, the knowledge the younger prince was going to go to the front wasn't a hard secret, so he couldn't immediately put blame to her. The whens and wheres had been kept more vague, however. She was there, his last night. And few else would have had any sort of connection to Nornheim - where communication between the realms was now normally cut off.

But these magics he was seeing afield… Subtle. Powerful. Capable of misdirection and sway and a kind of deadly poison themselves. Something that might just be able to hide from him, if careful. Maybe even the Queen, unless she knew how to look for it.

Were the sisters somehow the spies he feared? And if they were, were they also something else under the pretty smiles and their attempts to court the princes? He licked his lips again, thinking of that first sorceress he'd killed. It was a jump.

But Thor's newest change in behavior was a sharp warning all its own, and his instincts told him sometimes it was better to leap.

From here, he couldn't know the answer to many of his questions. But from Asgard itself… Calm now, Loki glanced at the Jarl. "Jarl Ulf, I tell you before these few witnesses and no one else. Keep it within this tent."

"Your Highness?"

"I'm riding out tonight back to the palace, hard gallop. I intend to be back by dawn, if not earlier if my horse can bear it. I want no messenger ahead, no call to the ravens, no word to or from Heimdall, _nothing_. Hogun specifically is to be left out, and all my apologies in advance for that. I am acting on this not as soldier or tactician or prince, but as field intelligence, do you understand? I'll return if and when I can."

Jarl Ulf nodded, sedate and understanding. Loki had grown to like the old man very much, and as he had with Eir, Loki was learning all new language from him appropriate for those moments when elegance and finery simply would not do. Ulf looked at the palace messenger. "Sorry, lad. You're not going anywhere for a day. You sit in this tent, dead silent, and dumb as the proverbial rock."

The young man winced, but didn't argue.

"I'll get you a blanket and some mince pie, though. It's mostly fresh. Tastes a bit strong of horse."

The young man did not look any happier.

Ulf grinned and looked up at the prince, reaching out his hand to grasp Loki's smoother one as if it were just as old and strong. "Good ride to you, lad. And whatever you think you're hunting, fuck 'em, too."


	14. Chapter 14

14.

. . .

Frigga took Loki's arm and smiled for a passing Einherjar, her fingers giving him a pinch along the back of his cloaked tricep to indicate they needed to meet more privately. The guard bobbed his head and strode on, seeing nothing more than a Queen politely greeting an unremarkable young lord in lieu of the All-Father's personal audience. The lord was from the northern edge, maybe, or maybe even Vanaheim. Hell, he could have been one of the light elves for all the guard cared. The guard would forever be unable to recall anything specific, except a dimly annoying itch in his eyes. It all seemed unimportant.

She pinched again with her bottom two fingers, then let him go and continued on down the hall, her hand reaching out to clasp a healer's in equally friendly greeting. Loki knew what the signal meant. Not to meet at her solar - instead, one of the private gardens, where it was difficult to be observed. He slipped away and went _dim_ , picking his path towards the meet, and found she had already left a wrapped parcel for him to look at. Frigga had been busy in the hour since he'd passed her a secret message of his own.

There was a note in her handwriting laying atop it. _Be careful, my son_.

It tingled under his fingers, that parcel. The weight and heft of a thin book - a journal, most likely. Or even, he realized, some personal, disposable grimoire. He plucked it out of the white parchment folds the Queen had sealed it with, still wearing his riding gloves from his hurried pre-dawn arrival, and glanced at the tan, unremarkable cover.

The tome seemed inert. He wrinkled his nose, then looked again with a whisper through his teeth. Still nothing. He turned it over in his hands, looking at the engraved silver clasp along its side, and he looked for a key rune among its intricate details.

 _There_. He put his focus on the simple thing, nothing more than a line and a few swirls more striking than the rest of the decoration.

A sickly, faint aura licked along his in a defensive response and he nearly dropped the book.

"It's trapped, Loki. I haven't tried to open it yet." Frigga slipped into the garden from one of the side doors, a deep blue cloak flung over her shoulders and a shadow all around her form. He looked at her, then blinked as his eyes fought him. She shifted, letting aside her own second cloak of _dimness,_ then crossed the garden to sit on the bench close to where he stood.

"Where did it come from?" He asked the question honestly, but he also knew.

"Amora's chambers, in line with your warnings. It was hidden, but not so well as it could have been. She expects no visitors normally, save for her sister. And they two are still out for a ride with Thor as we speak. Strange you knew where she keeps her second key." She gave him a wry smile, one tinged with knowing good humor and no judgement.

"Lucky guess," he muttered, studying the mundane lock and the curse that lay underneath it. Then he looked at his mother. "Good odds we open it and it's coded inside."

Frigga laughed, unworried. "And if it is, it'll be one of the five common whisper-codes old mages in the Nine Realms like to use when the witch-hunters get hot under their collars again. Loki, my son, not everyone is as clever and as suspicious all the time as you and I."

He couldn't resist a snort, handing the book over to her. Frigga took it with fingers wrapped in the hem of her cloak, and she whispered a few words in an elegant spell that would be decades before he could mimic, and the lock of the trapped book popped open. She scanned its contents, her face tightening.

"And?"

"And you were right. Right about it being coded. Right to be alarmed. Right to slip straight home and come to me." Frigga's voice was dour as she kept flipping through. "Second-era code-chant. Popular among the old Nornheim sorcerers that preceded what we face now. There's accents to it, so to speak… linguistic motifs I can identify."

"You learned this from her first war?"

"No," said Frigga, distracted. "From an old Norn woman that came to Vanaheim when I was little. I bargained the code out of her over years. I collected such things, then." She looked up at him and her eyes were intense. "And there's other traits to this particular variant. Loki, my son, this is Karnilla's own cant-work. A kind of private version of the language, something I _did_ see a handful of times the last war during intercepts. I'll need to study it further, but the gist already lies plain to me. The girls are working _directly_ for her. No intermediary. No handler."

He sat down beside her, silent.

"They are trusted close for this. Her true first act of war was not the soldiers at the breach, but slipping the girls into our home among the frightened." She snapped the book shut, tossing it onto the bench across with a ferocity that was rare, but also familiar. "Cunning little bitches."

 _That_ startled him to the bone.

"Don't have that stricken look too long, my son. Even I'm capable of feeling utterly infuriated and utterly finished with bastards and traitors when I find them under my roof. I too can be sometimes imperfect in how I phrase that anger." She exhaled through flared nostrils, her hands finding each other to begin picking carefully at her palms. "All right. I've had my outburst. Now we need to respond."

Loki leaned back on the bench, feeling the grit of the hard stone of the plainer carving through the thin leather of his gloves. In her tone was the familiar request, put the wheels and gears of his mind to the test and lay out the matter plain. "The issues at hand are sizable. There are two of them, they know not to be together long - not to mention they don't much seem to care to. We don't know yet their full capabilities, we don't know how Lorelei managed to worm her way into Thor's attention so neatly, and we don't know how they're communicating with Nornheim. Now, the basic answer to several of those is simple: Magic. We can handle that. The repercussions are grander. We can shut them down with a little study, but when we do, we have to do it _fast_ , before either of them can send word back to Karnilla. Much less escape to her with all they've learned."

Frigga kept picking at her palms, her chin tilted towards the sky. "All good points, but let me add a wrinkle, my son - what if we found _through_ them a tunnel, so to speak, straight on to the old sorceress?"

Loki turned his head to look at her, surprised. A direct response, subtlety left aside. The sort of thing that could end a war by striking clean at the head. "Is that even possible?"

"Might be." She pulled in the corner of her lip, biting at it as she thought. "But first we'd need the rabbits to flush out and run home to their warren. Give us the trail to follow."

"One whiff of danger and they would. They're not fighters. But not wise to face both of them together, mother, that's too much open risk to us and the rest of the palace."

She nodded. "Fair point. But my best suggestion comes under a clinging mother's old fears. I don't want either of my sons in danger."

He laughed, small and tired. "I've been afield for a scant five months and it's felt like five years. Bit late for that."

Frigga took that in, silent. "I tried to warn you."

"You did." He clasped his own hands together, a fingernail immediately going for an assault on another one despite the layers of glove that kept the habit from being effective. "It helped."

"There are no long eras of peace in Asgard, Loki. For all our wisdom and our power, the call for blood draws a kind of hunger deep into our warriors. We seek out trouble, and our men forever think to hone themselves on it." She shook her head, her eyes closing. "May this be the end of another small and bloody era, and may we have a little rest after. Just a little. I can ask for nothing more." She looked at him. "I need you to unseat Lorelei tonight, and see what she's done to Thor. She won't expect your interference, not so quick and so soon."

"Not Amora?" By virtue of the journal's existence alone, Loki realized he'd made at least one mistake. She _was_ the elder and the leader of the pair. But something about Lorelei had given her the edge on caging Thor.

"No." She said it curtly, but not unkindly. "I've got my own eye on her. And Karnilla, too, in the end." She reached out and curled her arm around his, in her particular kind of gentle hug. "But I ask you to be careful. In this plan, I am putting you in harm's way, if only for a moment. When she breaks and runs, Loki, let her. Protect yourself and your brother first. Neither of them are going to get far. The flush of the hare is all I need." She squeezed his arm, harder. "You are _not_ facing this alone."

He nodded. "Tonight. Until then?"

"Remain hidden and dim both, but within range of my signals. I'm going to continue to study this journal while they three ride the field near, find some clues about what we might be dealing with. Where their particular talents lie. When I know, you will know - and you take that knowledge with you when you lunge for her."

. . .

He had no interest in holding a night's court, but Asgard's All-Father had been noticeably unreliable of late and Loki realized he had no choice but to sit upon the throne and listen to Odin's council. Their patience with him was on the edge of strained as it was. While they were all loyal men who would never turn their hand or their thoughts against the crown and spear, it wouldn't take much for them to start casually bringing up Thor's coronation again. To comfort and ease the old man, of course.

Thor may have turned away from the seat of power at his last opportunity, but he could possibly still be pressured by older, wiser warriors who would talk to him nervously and in low, serious tones about the fading king and his grief for his queen. As if Loki himself had become doddering and forgetful. Tired, yes, and strained, but he refused to entertain the idea that he was failing.

There were small voices in his mind that had questions about his faith in himself, but they were behind those old, locked doors, not a few of them scarred recently fresh by events he thought about even less than his possible royal mistakes. Sanctuary, and Thanos, and all his creatures and strange family, that stayed down deep. If his sleep was further restless because of these things, he did not acknowledge that, either.

Meanwhile, he had not sent guards into the warrens that led to the Queen's sanctum. His hunter, that somehow unsettling and faded memory come back to life, had not sold him out immediately. He reckoned it fair he did the same for her. For one night, perhaps, while he considered questions whose shapes were still vague to him.

Five, maybe six hundred years since… Loki shook his head and its crown of illusive grey mane and glowered at one of the younger jarls instead of the prince, who stood in the back of the hall with a considering expression on his face. _That_ had all of Loki's annoyance, discovering at the last moment Thor was to attend tonight. Deeper irritation nestled deep against bone that if Heimdall remained in position at the Bifrost gate, he _wouldn't_ have been surprised.

Those same councilors that looked at the king almost pityingly glanced now and then at the prince, as if relieved by his presence. Loki tried not to snarl, realizing he could no longer ignore his brother's arrival. The bearded chin raised, formally acknowledging Thor. "You travel again. Do not the humans need their champion?"

Thor shrugged from the far end of the hall, casual if now standing at proper attention. "There is much of the realms yet to see with new eyes, and much even of the galaxy. Our threats will always be expansive, and sometimes new and strange. I have been many places, Your Majesty. And sometimes all one wants, for a little while, is to go home."

Councilors nodded approvingly, murmuring to each other.

Loki leaned back against the throne, feeling its cold pressure against his back. _Is this home?_ The angry question threatened to come out of his mouth and he swallowed it. It was not what Odin would say - and the small voice that asked it knew that the question was not meant for Thor. "And here you are." He gestured to the council. "The wise fret and the warriors mutter. Politics, in our season of rest between our wars. It is perhaps no wonder we go for blood so often." He laughed, dour and guttural, remembering Frigga's old words.

"I suspect we are not truly in a season of rest, Father. Only a lull, the eye of some greater storm." With his arms crossed, Thor walked closer to the king, his brow creased. "Some of the places I go, we hear words and whispers. Legends of eras before ours. Patterns changing between suspicious merchants in the deeper reaches of space. Warlords seeking Death Herself, on the gleam of something stranger yet." Thor shrugged, unable to see how behind his illusions, Loki's stomach had turned to acid and ice. "That all may be nothing. But nonetheless I fear _something_ is rising on the wind."

"So should we fret at your ghosts, meanwhile?" It came out colder than the king might have ordinarily said, but at least it was that instead of fearful. Loki's hand curled within the edge of a broad brown and gold-embroidered sleeve, angry with himself. Angry with that same warlord. This was not a topic he wanted raised. Not now, while he was tired and too many other memories rippled along the currents of his chaotic mind.

"No." That brow furrowed again, just for a moment, as he studied the king in a way Loki didn't care for. "But we should be aware. Things are changing, Father. Even for us."

"Asgard does not change quickly, my prince. We withstand, we are steel and stone. The river changes for us, not the other way around." One of the elders shifted on his bench, looking between king and prince.

"And both of those will erode in time, if not cared for. Steadfast and strong doesn't mean immutable." Thor looked evenly at the old warrior, not annoyed with him. Such had been the way of life for millennia. "We must care for our futures, and for those futures who rely on our steadfastness. And that means we must remain alert. The best warriors never rest on laurels alone. They practice. They stand ready. They keep the blade _sharp_."

"Does my son come home to lecture our kingdom, as if we forget who and what we are?" 'Odin' cocked his head, Loki burying his rising fury with his brother within a mask of colder irritation.

"No…"

"You are young yet, and you are _not_ the king." Imperfect, still riskily angry, drawing the eye of Thor back towards him. Loki realized he didn't care. Still, he swerved himself away from his own traps as best he could. "You have rejected it in favor of understanding all our realms better. This is noble, and useful, but perhaps you might also recall understanding _Asgard_ _itself_ in such context."

"As you do?" Thor stared back at him, just as hot now, contrasting with the frozen gold of the throne under his bones. "Father, when last did you ride out to look for that greater context of all our realms?"

Murmurs began to shiver from councilor to councilor, the old men uncomfortable as a subtle war began to clash open. Thor and Odin, or Thor and Loki. The tone and the fight was the same. Loki's palms sweated ice, losing sense of who he was, what he was trying to say. He sagged in the throne instead, unsure of his next volley. He was tired, and he hated, and he cared about what Thor said entirely too damned much, and he resented that most of all. "Cold days, when we war with each other instead."

Thor stood quiet for a long time before nodding. "It's true. The old civil wars were the worst, Father." He paused, thinking. "Better we never face such things again, though neither history nor the future are ever that kind."

Loki thought of Karnilla's fate, the memories coming back refreshed, wrapped in black leather, and he stayed silent. If there was some warning, some suspicion in Thor's attack, it was subtle enough to not be found easily.

"I will think on our small argument, Father." Thor stepped back with a dutiful nod of his head. "And it is that, small. Between us is our love of Asgard above all else."

"And I," said Loki, quiet and tired. He waved off the councilors and their glances. "Let us both rest and think for a time. Enough for now."

When he rose from the throne, he felt the weight of the illusion around him as thick and real as if it were his true form, and he knew the old men of the palace watched him leave with speculating eyes.


	15. Chapter 15

15.

. . .

 _Ago_ ~

Loki stayed close in the shadows that night, watching the trails and keeping his own utterly masked until he knew Amora had peeled off, leaving Lorelei and Thor alone in one of the private family lounges. He could still hear their laughter, his brother chuckling broad and loud at some simple remark of Lorelei's, and he wondered if it were a true laugh or not.

Frigga had torn a few clues loose from the hidden journal. Amora _was_ an enchantress, and a good one. The journal itself and its traps were her work, certain other of her belongings had tricks to them her captors needed to watch for, and she apparently controlled the communications with Karnilla's fortified Norn holding. Her spellcraft wasn't shabby, either, specializing in aero elementalism and not a few charm spells. As for Lorelei, with a laugh, Frigga had indicated _she_ had actually been in the city before, roughly a century ago - if briefly, then. Trained initially as a healer and then running off back home, dissatisfied for reasons Eir and her other scholars of the art never quite figured out. Frigga suspected Karnilla in that.

Lorelei also had a specific talent she'd trained above all else, some kind of transfiguration of her voice, itself already invested with some sort of gift.

According to Frigga's warnings, it was that skill to watch for most closely. There hadn't been many notes on it, the sisters both taking Lorelei's gift for granted and not exactly writing for the spying eye. But again Frigga assured Loki that he was not handling the issue alone.

Certainly he _felt_ alone, lurking in the hall and waiting for a moment he knew would result in the three of them, with Amora well away and being braced for a trap once he'd caused a ruckus here. But there was nothing else for it. Loki slipped closer, now seeing the profile of Lorelei's pretty, almost heart-shaped face as Thor's gaze followed her around like a puppy.

His magical wards were already in place, across his spirit, his sense of personal focus, but without being quite sure of what she was capable of, this was still going to be a risky stunt. So, there was nothing else for it, really, but to swagger in his most obnoxious of ways, as he did so well, and hope his other armor of mischievous audacity gave Loki an extra inch of safety. He looked down at himself, still in rider's leathers gone grey from road and wear, and hidden scraps of effective but unlovely armor and decided no, that wouldn't do at all.

It might be vanity, but by Gods, simple transmutations and shifts through his familiar wardrobe had been one of the first things he perfected at Frigga's knee as a child. Just not _the_ first.

"Hi!" chirped Loki merrily, swerving into the room in a prince's regal black silks slashed with green. He now looked as if he'd just woken from a refreshing nap and was ready for a fine feast. "And how is everyone doing tonight?"

Thor blinked, looking as if someone were punching their way into his thoughts through a good dream. Lorelei froze with her mouth hung open in a fished-out, absolutely shellshocked way that Loki's memory captured and carried gleefully for years after. "Brother… I… I thought you were yet at the front?" Thor sounded muddied, as if the words were hard to string together.

"I was!" Loki clapped his bare hands together once, just as if he were taunting the handmaidens instead, watching the Nornheim girl flinch at the sound of it. "But you were unable to come and I thought, my gods, what is so _wonderful_ here that you set down your favorite blade?" He grinned at Lorelei, manic and openly malefic, because really, he figured, why the Hel not? Get that rabbit good and spooked, just as requested. "So I rode right on back to come and see. And what _do_ I see? Why, perfect love and perfect _charm_! I'm jealous, Thor, really."

Lorelei's mouth finally closed, and the color rose high in her face. "And you come to us and not visit sweet Amora first? She misses you so."

"Didn't see a need, Lorelei. Should I have?" He smiled again, teeth bared, not at all friendly. Her fingers were crawling at the folds of her dress. Probably she had a knife. It was Asgard in the season of war, everyone had at least one. He deliberately flicked his gaze to those hands, not worried about a little thing like a blade. "What would she have waiting for me? Something special, I expect."

Thor looked between the two, still fuzzy - yes, charmed - and he shifted uncomfortably. "Loki, I hear concern in your voice, but I'm not certain about this tone you take with my be-"

"She's not anything to you, Thor. Not really your type, if you'd just stop to think." He arched a thin black brow. "But in her defense, I do expect she at least knows about the pointy end."

She didn't lunge at him with the blade, but it was in her hand. "Get on your knees," she said, and her voice was raw musical threat.

Loki opened his mouth to say something sarcastically clever right back before he realized his skin was crawling like it belonged to someone else and the room was shifting perspective. _Oh, shite_ , he managed to force through greying thoughts, realizing his knees were in fact approaching the floor, his hands resting on each thigh in easy supplication despite himself. _Yes, I think I just might have underestimated this play_. _Please gods, let there indeed be backup not far behind_.

He took a breath, attempting to focus his thoughts inward and fight back against the nature of this new type of magical charm, but he realized he was completely captivated by the high color in Lorelei's cheeks, the way her long brown hair swung over her pale shoulder.

In the back of his mind, far and wee: _oh you've got to be ruddy kidding me, I am not one to be led around by my-_

A sharp-toed shoe connected with the thought he was now incapable of finishing coherently, and the cool floor came up to meet his face sideways. Forget the knife, Lorelei went for brute effectiveness in the end. Entranced by the swivel of her calf under the dress and that inner part of himself screaming in absolute fury and primal pain at the distraction, Loki watched her whip around on Thor. "I need to go, love, and fast before someone else comes along to snap you out of my grasp." She reached down and kissed him, full and hard, her voice still honey sweet and full of poison enchantment. Thor continued to look stunned. "But we _did_ have fun!"

The pain in his groin shook Loki back into some focus, and he dug with shaking fingers for one of the throwing knives he always kept hidden along his waist. Lorelei saw him move, went for another kick to his belly and he managed to roll out of the attack before it did more than brush him. "Gods, you're an annoying boy. I don't envy Amora at all."

Loki half-groaned, half-laughed, his lower belly twisting acidic offense at him with every motion. He flicked the knife out as she swept by him and nicked one of those perfect calves. Blood trail. He hoped it helped, if not at least annoyed the hell out of the girl. Lorelei stumbled, turning on him like a cat, complete with a hiss. Her own knife pointed at him again. "You _stay_ there, and maybe I take a trophy after all."

Something rustled in the hall. A guard, maybe. But the harshness of her voice began to shake Thor loose. "Loki?"

"Thor, stop her!" He couldn't move, trapped within himself and watching that knife in her hand.

"No," said Lorelei, venom and mead, and Thor sat right back down again.

 _Oh, come on_. Loki bared his teeth, knowing full well the trophy she had in mind.

Something clanged outside the lounge, and then Loki heard a soft jingle, like a bell. Loki realized it wasn't a true noise - it was a message-spell of some kind, hearing it as well as its intended target by chance, or by training and proximity. Lorelei turned towards both sounds, the knife faltering. "Amora?" Shouts from the windows and the fields of the palace instead of the answer she sought. "Amora!"

With that, Lorelei seemed to forget all about her groaning prey and the other prince sitting primly on the chaise as he waited for his next command. Her free hand gathered her skirts as she fled from there, and Loki was glad to see the arse end of her, and gladder yet to realize he was already no longer unwillingly focused on that view.

"Loki?" Thor seemed to come back to himself, rubbing at his head and now leaning towards his prone sibling, looking both worried and righteously pissed off.

"Hello, brother. Before you go get your weapons, could you pass me that goblet of iced mead, call for Eir, and don't tell anyone else about how I look like I'm about to vomit down here?"

"What in _blazes_ has been going on?"

Another wounded, bitter laugh. "Well, I seem to have lost one hell of a battle, brother, but if we're lucky, maybe we win a war."

. . .

"He was right, you know. You're not very up on what else is going on around the galaxy." Kara sat in the windowsill, flipping a small blade the length of her finger as she looked out at the night sky.

Unadorned by the king's illusion, Loki sat, tired and angry, in the chair next to the broad desk. She was there when he walked in, and obviously she had somehow observed the evening's council. He could have turned around and alerted a guard, but then with that same weighty weariness that he carried from the throne room he decided _why bother?_ So he sat instead, regarding her in mutual silence, until she chose to pick at him with sharp words in the shape of his brother. "I'm busy," he said, curt. He turned back to the desk, looking for the final night's work of authorizations and other such small reports that needed a king's pen.

"Busy at the rulership of a kingdom that isn't yours. Disregarding that last bit, I would say this _is_ still your business." He heard the soft scrape of fabric against the sill, knew it was a shrug. "But surely it isn't mine."

"No. It is not."

"You used to be far more talkative. I can't tell if this is an improvement." Another shift, another soft scrape of fabric. "My borrowed rooms are untouched. You didn't tell the guards. Again, I cannot tell if that's good or no. It's foolish on the surface, to be sure. Curious decision."

"I'm not your target."

"No, but you're between me and him. That won't save your skin forever." In the last words, the slow, dragged out drawl of temptation. _Just tell me what I want, and this can all go away_. It was a pleasant lie, and possibly not an intentional one. No, none of it would. Even if Kara left him alone in the end, the threat would remain. Sooner or later someone else would find him. Thor would look close eventually, find a crack, something to recognize. He wasn't the easy, affable idiot of their childhoods anymore, not entirely. Heimdall sat in his new cell, and Loki knew he would continue to nurture his anger until he found a way to force his freedom with it. Something would be missed. He would make a mistake. He was tired, and he was beyond caring.

Or it would be Thanos, come 'round for debts and blood.

Memories he didn't want flooded into his mind and his hand jerked, spilling a fat drop of jet black ink on the table. He stared at it, seeing the distorted reflection of his drawn face, not recognizing his own eyes. They looked blackened in the ink. Broken.

A scrap of fabric landed by his hand, some torn piece of linen bunched and marked and bearing the telltale signs of having been shoved in utility pouches and belt cases for ages. "That's heartswood, isn't it? Probably hasn't been waxed in a decade. Porous stuff. It'll stain if that ink sits."

Loki grabbed the scrap and mopped up the ink without a word. His head pounded, drums from the depths of his cerebellum, the music of old screams.

"Still so tired, then." Back to that familiar, chilly neutral. Even without the way the mask muffled her identity, her cadence could change in an instant, becoming nigh unrecognizable. "Something more than the drain of magic? Most guilty men sleep just fine, I've found."

"That is also not your business." The blade in her hand might as well be digging under his skin.

"Ah, but 'twas you yourself that reminded me of my duty to the kingdom." A chuckle, just as cold. "So I suppose kingdom matters are my matters again."

"Again." He nodded, remembering what she'd said. "Her weapon."

"Mm."

"What did you do for her, exactly?" He stared at the place where the ink had been. "Where did she point a blade like you?"

It was Kara's turn for silence. He could sense her watching him, a gaze with the physical weight of granite. He thought in that silence, putting together the few scraps he had. "Karnilla, you mentioned. You came to the palace shortly before she ascended again." Loki turned in his seat, regarding her. No mask tonight, but that rounded, once gentle-looking face was a blank in its own right. He thought he could guess around its edges, at least a little. Not as easily as that white costume with its twining vines and flowers she wore once. He realized there had been a parallel there with her blacks now. Some private joke. "You were involved in those matters, then. That long ago war."

"Karnilla." A softer laugh, bitter and grim. "That overeager old bitch. Didn't know what she'd really walked into, by the end."

"With you?"

Kara snorted, disdainful. "With the Queen."

Loki absorbed that, the face of Frigga still causing a sharp, painful tug inside his chest. "Tell me."

"I don't owe you tales, prince."

"No, but I've got something you want." He leaned back in the seat, wondering what he was really trying to bargain for. Like Heimdall, this seemed right, but also there were risks to be discovered. "I keep my promises. Tell me that tale, and eventually, but reasonably, I'll tell you about the All-Father. Alive or not. To be clear, it's a conversation I'm actually buying, Lady Kara." More of the old memory struck him, and he found an echo. "I don't get many of those of late, not honest ones."

She shook her head with a laugh, unconvinced. "Go befriend a innkeeper's girl and sell her your woes, I'm not for your purchase."

"I'm not giving up my woes, they're mine and no one else's." He lifted his chin. Sleep was a long time coming, his weariness aside. The time meanwhile was his to pay with. "Tell me. At least a little."

"Why?" She wasn't angry. The curiosity in her voice was probing, distrustful.

"There were pieces of the Queen that I didn't know." He frowned, realized he'd hit on a small piece of the truth. It hurt to give it up, but it also might buy what he wasn't sure he wanted. "Give me that much to renew my memories by." A laugh of his own, small and grim. "Before I get myself destroyed."

The knife in Kara's hand disappeared. She looked at the stars again, and he could see the crease of her own weariness at the corners of her eyes. "All right, prince. All right." Her voice went soft, still cautious. "Been a while since I told a story, and never told this one. But for a king's marked head, how small a coin is that?"

"Take a chair, then. It's going to be more comfortable than that sill."

Kara looked into the depths of the room, freshly wary. "I like my safe exits better."

Loki flapped a hand. "I'll stay where I am. The seat over there, across from the bed. Won't be anything between you and that window, and I've got five full lengths to get to the door. Good enough?"

She studied the room, eyes narrowing a little as she assessed. Then she slipped down from the window, hesitating, before crossing to the narrow little chaise and sitting in it with creaky decorum. All her grace was still there, but that trained caution of hers kept her wound tight and alert.

Loki rested his elbow against the desk, making himself more comfortable. As promised, he didn't move otherwise. "And I don't expect to hear everything." He smiled, small and lopsided, realizing he wanted to grasp for as much as he could. Someone else's voice, seeing him true. Whether they hated him or not. "A good bit of wisdom says start as close to the end as the storyteller's audience can reasonably still follow the tale."

"Close to the end, then." Kara looked at the ceiling for a moment, then an improbably light smile crossed her face. "I'll tell you a little, Prince. But not all. Some of it is my own business, and none of yours."

"Fair enough."


	16. Chapter 16

16.

. . .

 _Ago ~_

Kara stayed knelt on one knee, her profile shadowy in the blacks and greys she wore when acting as something other than the daylight handmaiden she most often posed as. "Lorelei's been handled, Your Majesty. According to plan."

"And without exposure?"

"Drove her straight into that knot of your son's friends, gathering on the floor below as the letter you sent in his name requested of them. They never saw me. They saw plenty of her." She looked up into the Queen's face with a small, droll smile. "Tried to charm her way through with the same method I observed in the lounge, but interestingly enough, the poisoned word did not work on the Lady Sif." Sif herself now stood main guard over the prisoner, having figured out quickly for herself what was going on with the runaway 'refugee.' Kara's respect for Thor's long-suffering friend remained strong - especially enjoying the part where Sif had punted the girl across the room with a hearty shield whack.

Frigga frowned as she collected that detail and put it with the rest of the night's discoveries, her hands knotting against each other as she paced her solar with slow, deliberate steps. "That's an interesting targeting mechanism. The charm only works on those inclined to be romantically interested in the girl. Would have been better if the journal had been clear on that."

"Would have, Your Majesty. No doubt of that. But your sons are safe." Kara inclined her head in respect and then dipped it low again. "I could not remain, of course, but by what I could hear it seemed the effects of the spellbinding left Prince Thor quickly." She left out the _other_ bit she overheard - the ridiculously over the top and entirely familiar method the younger prince had chosen to unknowingly scatter the prey into Kara's path, and getting his bits kicked in for the cheek of it. Kara was capable of tact, when it mattered.

Frigga took the canvas stool closest to her, gesturing once for her servant to rise, and then again to have her take the small chair beside her. When Kara resettled, Frigga took to the scholastic tone she always used when planning her next moves. "Amora is still running. She's not entirely stupid, her path alters course regularly to fox the riders I put after her, but the destination is known regardless of her games. She'll go right back to Karnilla's skirts, just not tonight."

"Do you want me to run trail?"

"I don't, Kara. I put my own mark on her before she slipped out the gates, and no one in Nornheim will sniff it out until far too late." She reached out to the table, pulling a small copy of a map towards her. There were already several notations on it, creating a path only Frigga's magics could track. "She's off the main roads already, but there's enough of a blockade between her and the boundary that we're going to get an extra few hours rest before she manages to break around it. I expect she'll go north. It's quicker, and while not safer than the southron route, I don't think she's concerned with such mundane threats right now."

Kara frowned, studying the map. "And she'll not return for her sister?"

"No…" Frigga bit the corner of her mouth, studying her own map. "Amora is a decisive, self absorbed little creature, I think." She glanced at Kara, wry. "I intend to use that detail when questioning Lorelei later tonight. You'll be on standby, of course. Until I have a proper binding made that will reign in that 'chanted mouth of hers, the Einherjar will be functionally useless to me in the dungeons."

"Of course, Majesty." Kara folded her hands on her lap, patient.

Frigga marked the silence with a nod. "Odin will be apprised of what we've done so far, and when it's time, I'll tell him the rest." The wry look became an even more dry smile. "He has conceded again that I know this battlefield of Karnilla's better than he. The war afield has been his to face, but that was never the true front of this conflict."

Kara kept silent, but a single corner of her mouth tugged down to bely what gnawed at her mind.

Of course, the Queen noticed. "He also recognizes that these are my plans, by my order."

Softly, unable to help herself, Kara said, "And because he would never turn against thee, Your Majesty, he focuses his dislike on myself ever hotter." Brigida, still the senior handmaiden, knew _something_ was off, sensing it like a wolf might smell a wounded kit. Thus, Brigida liked to be damn sure Kara served at the king's side at supper most nights now. With both royal sons withdrawn and distant, sometimes literally, over the still-raging war, there was little comfort in daily routine any longer. At least she used to be able to read chapter titles over Prince Loki's shoulder while he ate, marking out interesting books to find like treasure hunts in the library. Even that small pleasure was now gone.

She always tried not to think about such things. It was not her duty.

Frigga reached out and touched her arm once, gentle, with a single finger. "Such is the ire of kings. But nonetheless, your place and your service is protected by my word, so long as I live. 'Twas my demand to bring one of my Vanaheim's strange little secrets to the palace, which he knows full well. Not an argument he'll forget soon, being as he lost that one so badly." A small chuckle, no less full of love for her husband. "He'll live. And so will you, Kara. Discomfort, unfortunately, is a thing we will all have to bear."

Kara smiled earnestly for the Queen, feeling irritated with herself for letting that much slip out despite trained control. A mistake of her youth. Her emotional state and her own trials were not matters the Queen needed to bother herself with. "My apologies for bringing it up, Your Majesty."

"None are needed." Frigga turned the map over, studying a block of her own codes on the back. "I want Lorelei to stew a while before I pry at her. A few hours, perhaps. Just enough for her fears to gnaw ratlike at her mind." She looked back to Kara. "I dismiss you until then, with the suggestion you get what rest you can, meanwhile. Once I have some of what I'd like to know, we'll be ready for the next phase. And if we are fortunate, that will be the last such dangerous one."

Kara bowed her head, making ready to rise.

"Ah. And before I forget." Frigga patted around her desk, looking for something in one of the narrow drawers where she kept her correspondence sorted. She came up with a book, small and with a fine blue cloth cover. "Since, like my own son, I know you won't rest until you've fed your mind a little, something that might help that rest must now at last find its way to you." She offered it to Kara with a nod, who took it gently. "Not from my own hand does it go to yours, but say instead it's a gift from an unknown source."

Kara studied its cover with her brow tight from surprise, recognizing it from the night festival markets of almost a year ago. A tome on a possibly untrue but mythic story of a strong-minded Alfheim princess and a spellblade warrior she'd sworn to her own service before both turned mercenary. Luridly romantic thing, dismissively referenced in a more serious Elven history she'd read a few years ago, but a good story by all accounts. She hadn't had the coin on her for it, not then, and found no chance later to return to the stalls before the merchants left for their home fields.

But someone had noticed.

The shadow, of course. Kara ran her hand over the cloth, rough linen gone smooth as silk from age. Then she tucked it away within the leather of her night-guard tunic with a bob of her head in gratitude. Other thoughts on that topic must wait for privacy. "Then let the air hear my thanks, and also I thank you for passing it to me, Your Majesty."

"Mm. Off with you then, until you hear my next beckon." Frigga shook her head, amused. "And don't let Brigida rustle you in the dead of night again. Particularly not now. If she tries, remind her it's Helena's turn to serve at a moment's call, by my own command."

That got a laugh, if small and decorous enough to not sound too pleased with the idea of Brigida finally being on the outs for her stunts. "At your word, then. Good eve, Your Majesty."

"Good eve, Kara. And don't read the whole thing at one blow. Honestly, pace yourself and get some sleep."

. . .

Kara's private room was an insultingly small corner within such a grand palace, reminding her with physical pressure of her place among the other girls. Not a thing she minded much, having previously been barracked in tighter quarters and with no privacy at all. But the others thought it a way to keep her where they liked her, and she was not about to correct their mistake. It had enough cubbies and corners to protect the few things she kept that Brigida might 'accidentally' spoil, if she found opportunity, and that was all Kara really needed.

She sat on the narrow but comfortable cot, with its borrowed soft quilts and a few thin but fine-woven blankets, and she picked up the blue book from where she laid it atop her lockbox of gear for a few while changing into a night shift. A moment later, the box was hidden in one of its usual nooks. The book itself was an excellent copy, no stains, no tears on the cover. When she put it at an angle, she found the slight but intricate embossing that marked it as an original print. Hence the cost she was forced to balk at.

Someone hadn't been deterred by that detail. Again, obvious conclusion said it was her funny shadow from the last night of the fair. She had her clear suspicions of who that was - their height alone, the deliberately altered but noticeable gait, the overly dramatic and blatant lack of identity, the knowledge of the castle's lesser known - and beautiful - gardens. She tried not to think about that night too often, or anything related to her suspicions, really. Soft memories were distractions she couldn't often spare time for.

And yet despite herself, she had already slipped back to that secret solace twice. Just to look at the fairy pollen in the moonlight again, once floating, the other time quiescent and setting the plants themselves to an unearthly and elegant glow.

Regardless. The shadow should have at least padded his boots, or hunkered a bit more to fuzz what his profile made hard fact. But all those suspicions came up against the hard wall of the obvious tactical questions: Why? And what in Hel _for_?

Certainly there were no other clues. The prince had been off at war until today, and previous to that, turned to Amora either out of boredom or some sort of personal concept of masochism. Maybe both. It wasn't her business. Kara hadn't cared for the Nornheim girls much, mostly out of an instinct that followed the Queen's own hunch that there might well be something else lurking behind their pretty smiles - suspicions that had now been wholly borne out. But she hadn't cared about chosen company. Further, there was the wildly improbable fiction that anyone above a stableboy would even _notice_ a palace serving girl - the younger prince's odd affinity for observing much of what was going on in the palace notwithstanding.

Traditions and taboo took care of much of the rest. Finally, most important, she was not one _meant_ to catch the eye. It went against all her training and her duty.

And yet, the book lay in her hands, solid and real.

Kara traced a finger along the spine of it, reading the shifting silver Elf glyphs that appeared at the warmth of her touch, unable to keep a small smile off her face. Well, regardless of source or reason, a good story was something to treasure. She snuggled down, her back against the cool wall behind her cot with a too-soft pillow to prop her spine, and she read her new book until the princess of Alfheim snuck out through the wine cellar to properly kill the snot out of a roving goblin band with her own dagger, going uncaught by an entirely too-uptight royal family. Then she fell asleep with the book stuffed protectively up under her chin, buying herself a time of peace before she strapped on her blades once more.

. . .

Queen Frigga stood, regal and cold, before the golden energy field that kept Lorelei contained in a private cell. There were no guards in sight, and Lady Sif had been ordered off by her word for rest. Frigga had asked for Valkyries to resume the guard cycle, not standard procedure, but come dawn they would take over the watch. Meanwhile, the Dwarves had been given the problem of Lorelei's bewitched voice - the solution, they said, would take less than a week to forge. Kara arrived at the solar just as the Queen dismissed the stationed emissary of Nidavellir, a plump old Dwarf lady whose head was adorned with countless thick ginger braids shot through with gold thread. The challenge was an obvious thrill, the emissary leaving with a skip in her step.

The Nornheim sister was now defanged, but still visibly furious. She stood in parallel to the Queen, her clean but plain prisoner's dress clenched in tight fists and staring down at her captor without a trace of respect. Kara watched from a secret shadow to ensure the safety of this interrogation, the queen's magic placing her in _dimness_. The illusion gave her that familiar itch, and she tried to not reach under her black mask to pinch at her tickling face.

"She didn't stay behind for you, Lorelei." Frigga's voice was as cold as her posture. "Never paused to look for you as she fled through the gates, my hounds and huntsmen at her back. Your sister is gone, and you are here, and you will never be free. Treason is one of our few great crimes, Lorelei. Either you will live out your life in this cell, slow and eternal and alone, or you will die and be forgotten. Which, do you think, is more merciful?"

"It is only treason if I serve the golden throne, and I don't, bitch queen. I serve the true." Lorelei bared her teeth at Frigga, who remained unmoved by the cheap insult. Kara's hand rested on the hilt of a small dagger, and a finger twitched. She had her own opinions on those options. "You slink down here and try to tell me my Amora doesn't love me, and I tell you back the day will come that she saves me from your kind."

"I'll be old and gone before that self-centered little creature returns for you. She let you lead around my son like a lamb, for such is your gift, but she was always the one controlling the information. The data from our refugees under the nose of my other son, the details you both stole from my family, all that ran through her fingers. And that, my dear, is always the real power. She sacrificed you to save her own skin, for more time to run away back home to a would-be ruler who will also raise no finger to rescue you." Frigga interlaced her fingers, the long gold trails of her hair spilling over her shoulders. "You're worthless to them." Then the smile, gentle and warm. "But you have some value to me."

Lorelei trembled, her knuckles going white and tight over the folds of her dress. "I will not betray my own family for yours."

"You don't have to, child. I have no need of that. But I do need certain information. Of an intellectual kind. No secrets, only wisdom. From one witchy bitch to another." The smile broadened, and like her husband and her warrior son showed on the battlefield, there was something hard in it. "You can give me that freely, Lorelei, and there will be no betrayals on your ledger."

"Or?" Her face the picture of distrust, Lorelei snarled the question.

"Or I _will_ take it from you. No physical torture, you must note. I'll just tear it from your mind while my maids hold you down. I can inform you that would be far worse."

Lorelei stared at her, blood drain leaving her face ghostly white. There were no threats here. Only the sedate promise from a queen at war. Kara lifted her chin, still watching. The idea that queens would be soft and bloodless in all things was a false one. Her own arrival in the palace had been met with a private sparring match with the Queen herself - Frigga wanting to be damned sure she was fully trained and blood-scarred. Kara had passed that test, but not easily, and she realized partway through that the Queen was going relatively easy on her with that long silver dagger Frigga kept near to hand. Tactics and cunning were being tested, not brute strength.

The implicit demand had been to keep improving herself, lest another, harder trial came. It struck her that this war and the Queen's secret hand in it was _precisely_ that kind of trial: no trial at all, and one with death as the reward for failure. She toyed with her dagger pommel, feeling its edges dull under her gloved fingernail.

"Should I speak freely, one _sorceress_ to another, what mercy do you grant?" Lorelei wasn't stupid. She hated, but she'd bargain to the end for a little more give. However, that hate was intense. "The blade or the silence?"

"You'll live, Lorelei, live to see every day your sister doesn't reach back for you, and you'll do it in the comfort of a palace cell and no Nornheim damp. Should if I be wrong and she tries to return for you, you gain that small victory before I see you both executed cleanly." A laugh. "And as the years drag on, and she does not, I will forget about you, except as a negligible point in my annual list of palace duties."

"To Hel's lap with you, and with the thing I sense in the shadows that you no doubt brought to threaten me if your words don't move me, and to Hel with your impotent King, and particularly to Hel with your two sons, both as boring and twisted up as you. Thor was a dull lay and your other boy is a mechanical thing Amora learned quick to hate. She told me all about _him_. When she comes for me, I expect she'll kill him on the way." Lorelei spat it all, panting at the end in fury. "You used him to catch me, when he didn't have the taste to get himself killed afield like she wanted. We won't forget that. Ever."

Frigga only watched her in silence, visibly untouched, regal, the glint of her eye meant to tell the girl that her insults were so meaningless that she, with all the power here cupped in her palms, deigned to ignore them. "Is your anger out of your system? What is your response to my bargain?"

"Fuck you, old queen."

"The blade and the tear, then." The Queen partially turned towards Kara, beckoning in a soft way that told her this was a bluff that preceded the very real hell that might wait for the prisoner. Kara slipped forward out of the shadows and the magical dim, her blade out a perfect inch, knowing the way the dungeon lights caught its glint. She was in her most theatrical blacks, meant to be seen, not for the hunt. These had dull silvered scales and blackened metal, and the mask that hid her face was charred with knife-marks and runes that spelled thirteen different names of Death Herself. She looked like some primal demon summoned to serve, her talons torn off and become blades in another's service.

Sometimes visual impact was a better threat than any weapon. The Queen was a master of such things and some years ago told her to keep the florid old set of armor despite her own mislike of it. For Kara, the more plain the gear, the more serious the work. This was a mere game, a jape.

Nonetheless, Lorelei shrank back from the edge of her cage at the sight of her, as intended.

"You saw true, Lorelei. I intend quite clearly to threaten you, if my words alone aren't enough." Frigga turned back to her prisoner. "I want you to recall, however, that my words came first. And I can afford to be merciful. One more chance to change your mind, to speak with me as one student of magic to another, and to be left in peace in your cell. An easy offer, Lorelei, instead of the pain a mother whose sons are at war might inflict."

Lorelei's gaze flicked from the barbed shadow to the queen and back. Then, slow and broken, she lowered herself and set upright a stool she'd kicked aside hours earlier. Sitting on it, her head bowed, the dungeon was filled with only the sound of her breathing.

"I will, for the sake of mercy, take your silence as consent." Remaining steadfast, never showing her own weariness with the night, the Queen stood tall with her shadow not far behind. "Let us begin."

. . .

Kara paused, looking out the window at a sky with no stars. "Going to rain again, looks like. And dawn comes in a few hours."

Loki stirred in his seat, jostled back into the now. He let his hand drop from where he'd been resting his chin on it as he listened and thought back to those lost days, looking out to see what she saw. "Storms, I think the 'casters decided. A grey morning, and a cold one after the rain passes through."

"And Prince Thor himself home in the castle to hear the thunder begin. How terribly apropos." Kara rose from her seat with more grace than she'd had when she took it, irony sharp in her voice. "You must hate that."

"Wait." He tried to not make it sound like a plea. It sounded hollow instead, as if his own voice were still calling from the past.

"The story's unfinished, I know." She didn't look at him for his interruption, checking her gear at her waist instead and taking a couple steps towards the window. "Another time. Next eve perhaps, or shortly after. Long enough for you to consider your end of the bargain, because you know I've got it marked due. You'd best get some rest, Prince, despite yourself."

He bit off another try, watched her slip into the sill with her boots finding a careful grip, and instead said, "You might just use the damned door."

"No joy in that, Highness." She looked at him, now only hung onto the side of the window with a single firm hand, and she wore a surprisingly bright grin for a moment. "Little enough fun in life of late, so I'll take what I can get."

He started to rise from the chair when she let go with a laugh meant at his expense, then sat back down again, knowing she was already long gone.


	17. Chapter 17

17.

. . .

Loki shoved the spellbooks he'd been poring over aside, glancing at the spine of one of them without really seeing it. Years of study made the ancient glyphs easily legible to him, though the work of translating the more arcane concepts of its theme was more difficult. A somewhat heretical work on meta-dimensional paths, a theory of layered universes where magicked travel was something like the secret paths between the Nine and the rest of the galaxy he knew and used, but vastly more strange and dangerous. A hobby project, a mental game he returned to now and then over centuries.

As tired as he was, he would make no progress now. Still, the old studies were its own kind of comfort. He had little enough of that any more.

With the rains keeping the streets of the city quiet and the councilors seeming content to leave him be for once, Loki spent most of the day unmasked but shadowed, remaining in the darkest corridors of the library and emerging once at the sound of a familiar voice echoing in a nearby hall.

He'd crept closer, overhearing exactly what he feared might begin behind his back - one of those old councilors sidling close to Thor, putting worried words in his ears. Feeding the first suspicions his brother already held about the wavering attentions of the king. And then, feeling like his physical body was draped heavy and cold over the fading wisp of his soul, he'd gone right back into the library. Numbness was all Loki had left in daylight. He read instead, and took what he would back to Odin's chambers, and now dusk was coming again.

He napped for an hour, forcing a trace of life back into himself, and when he woke the window was empty. In the skies beyond it was a wisp of fae-bright nebula, marked by blue and white stars. He thought of the secret gardens and the girl in the white dress who now perhaps hated him and possibly even Asgard itself, for things that he knew were his doing and not Odin's, and the melancholy and her anger was better than the numbness. He sat for a while, not once ever allowing himself the word 'loneliness.' Never that.

Loki looked at the books again, and then at the sky, and then he shoved himself out of the chair to go and make his way down into the depths of the old halls, to see if he could find that long ago girl for another piece of a story bargained for, and if he could make certain she hated him.

Safer that way, he thought again. For everyone.

. . .

The candles above the shrine were newer, a few inches taller each. He felt their warmth on his face as he loomed close over them. "You must change them often."

"There's the most pointless statement I'm going to hear this year. Did you come down to talk waxwork?" He looked over to see her irritated expression. It hadn't changed much since his arrival, finding the inner doors to the storage rooms unlocked and her poking her head out of the one she'd made private to glower at his unexpected appearance. "Knew I should have moved camp."

"Yes, you probably should have." He thought about asking why she didn't, then let it go. He'd earn another glare for the question, nothing more. "For all you know, a dozen guards might be behind me."

"For one thing I _do_ know, you're a liar, and you're lying right now." She snapped a gesture at him, dismissive, and she wouldn't step any closer to where he stood. "There's a lump of incense waiting in its bin at the side, there. I burn that one when midnight comes, it's a vetiver and honey blend. Odd mix, but she liked it. Sometimes I'd smell the ashes when arriving for some duty."

Loki looked and found it, hand molded and rough. Not a common mixture any longer. It was possible she'd made it herself. He brought it and its lacquered stone bowl up to the shrine candles, set it to burning with a touch of his finger before he placed it down on a small dip in the shelf. "It's similar to her meditation blends. She liked the earthy notes alone for that, but the honey was for solace by herself. Sometimes when she was troubled."

"I didn't ask." Brittle. Defensive.

"Call it an answer for free."

"You never give anything for free. Not to anyone." Kara stayed by her doorway, arms folded against a slimmer tunic. No armor, not right now. He could tell her eyes stayed on him, alert. He could feel the weight of that stare.

That wasn't the entire truth, but he didn't bother to correct her. It was true enough to matter. Meanwhile, Loki knew she was the sort to always be armed. There would be blades all underneath the hem of her silk and cotton tunic. He wondered how many knives she kept under her pretty handmaiden's dress when serving the All-Father his nightly goblet of wine long ago, and realized grimly that the old man probably asked himself the same question more than once. "Then call it a reminder of the bargain. That's what I'm here for."

"Bedtime stories, Your Highness?" There it was again, the way she pried at him, needled, tried to peel a layer of skin up from the fat and tissue underneath. "No books left in all of Asgard to please you?"

"I've already been reading tonight. Sometimes I'd rather listen." He smiled, wry, at the sound of her scoff. "You don't believe any of this, despite your agreement yesterday."

"I believe you when you say you want your memories of the Queen. Only that. But I also believe you're not the type to do anything for one reason alone. I expect you want time to figure out some other way past giving me what I want. So I'm letting you buy that time, waiting for you to realize you're trapped within my terms. And that time is coming short despite your game, one way or another."

"Are you pushing the councilors into thoughts of sedition?" Now he looked at her, realizing it was possible. "Is that part of your threat?"

Kara looked back evenly, and she didn't answer. Why would she? Either she was pressing them somehow, old connections to the Queen, and he would eventually be trapped by their machinations, or she wasn't, and the result was the same. Why undermine her own position? Instead, she came back at him from a different angle. "There's newer flaws in the Vrellnexian cells you put Heimdall in. Cracks formed by the Dark Elf assault. They're in some of the security reports, if you bother to check back."

"Why tell me that?"

"Because you can't do anything about it. You already know he's going to escape. I'm telling you how it's going to happen. Time, Your Highness. Flowing and unstoppable."

"I could go back on my word and move him."

"You could do that, yes. Thoroughly damn yourself. Toss aside whatever scraps of honor you have left. Hell, you could just kill him." She arched an eyebrow. "Is it worth it?"

"You're asking someone who's survived death more than once."

"You won't escape Her forever. When you do fall into dust, what will you say to her bone face in your own defense? Will She be vengeful Hela for you, or the Walker, or by some miracle only the keeper of the last door? How many chances to not be a son of a bitch will you have thrown out by then to weigh your odds? Do you ever think about that?"

He studied her, then looked at where the tunic caught in a pinch at her hip, a trace hint belying a small dagger's pommel tucked away there. She was closer to a secret thing than either of them knew. "Do you?"

Kara's voice was cold. "I know what I do, and I know my purpose."

"And your purpose now is to try and be a kingkiller. How's _that_ going to look in this ledger you cajole me about?"

"By my reasoning, pretty damned good."

He snorted. "Not to get into a moral argument, which let's be fair I'll lose, but might be you step back and consider your own position within overall context. It's not that great."

"I'm very close to saying the sort of intensely rude thing that gets one marched out of palaces and sent to Dwarven mines for a century or three. You're infuriating."

"I don't give a shit what you think you can say to me." He gestured at her, almost amused, then looked for the box he'd sat on yesterday, on the logic he'd already wiped off the dust courtesy of that day's cloak. "There, the dam's broken."

Kara was still eyeing him, a mixture of fury and bemusement digging furrows into her face. The candlelight made them into shadows, making her look thin and tired and it struck him to wonder how much of her own strength was only the fuel of her vengeance, and that he might simply wear her down before that clock of hers ran out. If he didn't collapse first. "Do you practice being this obnoxious, or is it raw natural talent?"

"Little of both, I think." Loki shrugged, acid filtering into his words. "Might even be genetic. I wouldn't know." He assumed she would be aware of that secret. He didn't know for how long she would have known. It didn't matter, and he thought he didn't care. He interlaced his fingers and looked at her, calm again.

"Come down here, pick a fight, accuse me of being just as immoral as you've become, and now you're going to sit on that box and switch gears back towards the bedtime story you think you're owed." She started to laugh. "Fuck me, you really might have gone mad."

"Probably." He gestured at her. "Tell me your tales. Please. Since we're on such _borrowed_ time. We'll see what gets to me first after - your politicians or one good and pissed-off old warrior."

"Not even an apology first for being an arse?"

"Why? You've no grounds for accepting it. Sooner told, sooner done, look at it that way. Tell me more, if not the rest."

"How a Queen went to war with a Queen." Kara shook her head, her arms folding against herself, defensive. He saw the other bumps along her waist, a glint at her heel, and knew how right he'd been. Finally, she shrugged. A small and hostile gesture, but there was a scrap of defeat in it. At last he'd won one of their skirmishes - if for a minor trophy. "Hells, all right. I give in. If at least it'll get you out of here so _I_ can sleep."

. . .

 _Ago_ ~

Frigga traced her fingers over the sketch she'd made from Lorelei's words, looking from it to the old maps of the Nornheim palace, in whose deep pools slept a true piece of the sacred and strange Norn seers themselves. Kara stood at attention at the other side of the table, an eyebrow arched. Frigga glanced up at her, a small smile. "Get your target to talking, and sooner or later they'll inevitably tell you far more than they realize. It's a subtle art. I'm not surprised the Thorned House doesn't teach it."

"Our mistresses favored plainer methods. Efficient. When we need to be on the move within seconds, we're not taught to act the archaeologist on a victim's brain." Kara shifted her weight, her lips curving in a wry moue. "Bit of a shame, really. Far more elegant your way, Your Majesty."

"At least I retained you at a young enough age that you can still learn to appreciate it. The elder blades they tried to offer me when I reached out were firmer women. Excellent at what they have been taught, but they will never learn much else. You know I wanted that better mental flexibility in addition to someone that could blend with the other girls. I'm afraid the house has always been a bit at odds with that."

"Traditions have a way of becoming stone walls, Your Majesty."

" _Very_ wise, Kara." The queen quirked the corner of her lip. "Don't ever let anyone tell you your readings are a waste of time. Even the ones meant for pleasure alone."

"What, like my deaconess did for some sixty odd years while I was growing?" Kara shrugged. There were certain hours she was allowed to be a touch less formal in the Queen's presence. This was one of them. "On the bright side, I learned a great deal about steganography and additional types of concealment just to outfox her."

"And that again is why you are retained instead of the others." Frigga nodded, then tapped the illustration of a hallway. "Here. Lorelei let slip something about the doors of the halls they use for drills now. And how they work at nightfall. This is where the patrols will be lightest."

Kara unfolded her arms and leaned over to study the maps. "They won't have changed the doors themselves. Blueprints say that's old lockwork, Fourth Ilmenite Era as the Dwarves reckon. Be a bigger pain in the arse to replace them than it would be to barter replacement keys from a smith that still knows the art." She looked up at the Queen, the rest of the observation snapping itself together almost audibly.

Frigga was smiling, broad and light. "I already sent their emissary another missive. We'll get a response within the hour - and our own copies of those keys, as I think they did exactly that." She shuffled the papers aside, pulling together a different set of blueprints. The lower halls, where Karnilla made her lair. "Now, here's the bottleneck, if we make it that far. She's not stupid, and she's not going to sleep easy. Guards, there'll be a few. That's your field. But she's going to have multiple layers of sorcerous security I need to cut through meanwhile. All without alerting her until we have no other choice."

"On behalf of the palace, I am obligated to say again that I could lead a small squad of your handpicked instead, if this direct attack is truly the best plan." Kara winced at the look she got. "I know your response, Your Majesty, but for the sake of my conscience, it has to be said." Not only her conscience, but she had no doubt the King was going to have a few things to say himself - _after_ he found out the the rest of the details about tonight's attack. If there were an after.

"No other sorceress I can pull into this hall on short notice is going to be armored enough to face Karnilla herself, and I will not send my own son. Not for this. She will cut him down without a thought, and I couldn't bear that. In the end this is _my_ war, and I'll not send anyone else to finish it." Frigga's words were firm. "Odin and I didn't end it centuries ago. He has kept her soldiers busy for me on the promise that this time, we do now what we couldn't then." She glanced at her handmaiden with a laugh. "He'll forgive me for taking this more personally than he realized. Eventually."

Kara kept her silence, resuming her study of the maps. The guards would go in sets, two or more likely three in a patrol to ensure full coverage of all possible blindspots and dead corners. Neutralization of each patrol was going to have to be fast, and the bodies were going to be a problem. There weren't many places to hide them, according to the blueprints. The next patrol _would_ find corpses. One or two could be hidden by the Queen's magic, giving them a little cushion before that happened. It was still going to be a fast strike by necessity. A two person operation, mobile, and hard-hitting. She bit her lip, running through opening scenarios and knowing they were all going to be waylaid by reality within moments.

"This is going to be a lot of improvisation and a Hel of a lot of running," said Frigga, answering her thoughts with a chuckle that now sounded almost delighted. "Haven't done anything like this since I was a girl."

"Bet there's a few stories there, Your Majesty."

"Always are. The stakes this time are much higher." Frigga straightened up. "There's the bones of a plan, and all we can rely on. I'll await the keys from my diplomat. You are dismissed for the hour, use it to center yourself and prepare your field gear. When I call you again, I'll have traced Amora's final path home. Then we gate to Nornheim to kill ourselves a would-be Queen."


	18. Chapter 18

18.

. . .

Kara kept her grip on the man's face, his last frightened gurgle trapped behind her leathered fingers as the last of his blood sprayed the darkest part of the wall. She wiped her blade on his chest as she shoved him into the corner with a knock of her hip, double-checking the other one to be sure he was just as dead as he'd been five seconds ago. Then her vision seemed to double, and then itch. The bodies and gore were suddenly gone, leaving behind only the cool stone.

"Last set I can do, Kara, and the illusions behind us are going to start to peel in about three minutes." The Queen snapped her hand back, the green glow leaving her fingers and running back along her armored gauntlet to rejoin her own inner fire. She glanced down the hall, and by the ferocity in a face framed by tight golden braids, Kara could see she was making the same calculations. Frigga spoke in a hushed whisper, a voice that could gutter into silence at a second's need. "We are now one minute behind. Damn that surprise patrol. I expected Karnilla to react to Amora's rushed arrival, but not so usefully."

"Won't earn it back standing here." Kara slapped her blade back into its sheath at her hip and resumed the lead, slipping herself along the walls to give herself a better view of any coming corners while using the natural gloom of the lower Nornheim halls. She kept her voice low as well. "Probably can't regardless. So we'll make do with what's left."

"There's the pragmatism I needed right now." The shadows around them both deepened again. "She still can't expect this, not so soon."

"She's never personally faced you afield, has she, Majesty?"

"No." They both paused as the shadows ahead flickered, moving on only when Kara verified with a nod that it was castle draft moving a torch and nothing more. "I did meet her once, however."

"Majesty?"

"I was much younger, and my grandfather was hosting a number of eccentrics in our small Vanaheim castle. It was a matter of some odd research, not important right now. Karnilla was among them, then already a woman long grown. Had an astounding knowledge of sorcery, absolutely enthralling speaker. It was hard not to admire her. But there was something chilling about her manner, even then. Something like hunger hung in the air when she talked. I'll tell you more another time." Frigga snapped her fingers, examining the small orb that formed in her hand. Kara didn't understand it, but didn't need to. "Three more life signs ahead. Also no magic to them." The orb disappeared in a puff and a clenched fist. "I wasn't surprised when she turned against the realms. That voice spoke for her future."

"Why are _none_ of the closest patrollers mages? She compensates with numbers instead, as my knives know, but almost all her sorceresses stay aboveground. Only whatever she keeps at her direct hand."

"A good question, Kara." The Queen put her hand on her shoulder, instinctively using the familiar code-gestures to mark where her magic said the next patrol would come from. "I suspect it's Karnilla's own sorcerous greed - and the resting Norns."

"Always thought they were either pure lore, or they'd sleep so deep in their own realm that none could awaken them."

"Think a voracious would-be Queen is going to leave a mystery like them alone?" Frigga's voice was dour behind her. "Oh no, Kara. When we enter her sanctum, you must not attempt to battle her. Handle her attendants as quickly as you've done these men, but leave her entirely to me. She sleeps among their forbidden dreams, and that is, I think, with express intent. She cannot understand what that lore means for her, and for me, but I intend to see to it she will." Then, lower yet, a breath in her ear. "Here they come."

The shadows around them both deepened further yet. Little cost to the Queen's pool of stored magic, as Kara only used the shadows for the two seconds it took for the three mundane patrolmen to come into range. There was no room tonight for anything but a fatal strike. One needle-like blade in her left hand snapped out to pierce the man on the left flank through his spine, dropping him limp as she then cut a vital artery to finish him. He would be dead before he ever understood what happened. The second, right flanking, received the same treatment - but this one saw the needle coming, and his eyes were afraid before they went empty.

The third had enough time to begin to realize what was happening, meaning no simple death through the cord. He instead turned into a wider blade waiting for him, his eyes rolling white and terrified as he realized his blood was already pouring out of his throat. Kara held the back of his head for a moment, ensuring he lost consciousness as quickly as the loss of blood allowed. Then he and the other two corpses were shoved aside into shadows as best as she was able.

Where possible, she had little use for excess pain. It was an effective tool, but meant for specific purposes. Like the others, she wiped her blade and moved back to the walls. "Here we go. No more little breaks."

"Straight on to our traitor, Kara. There'll be two guards at her door - and they won't fall quite as easily to your surprise attack."

Kara patted her belt by way of example. Both of them knew what she carried. Vials of poison, a longer blade, the garrote, and far more. "There's always another option."

"Or four," said the Queen, dryly amused.

. . .

The last two guards were nothing. Kara was not normally a stand-up fighter, but these were men that didn't understand what they faced. Her longer blade gored one and nearly decapitated the other, causing just enough ruckus in the hall that it acted as a chaotic counterpart melody to the sound of Frigga's magic throwing open the last sealed door between them and the would-be Queen of the Norns.

Karnilla stood awake, aware, and furious in the heart of her lair. She was a tall woman whose imperiously round face hid her real age. Her long, unbound black hair was shot through with twinned streaks of pure and unnatural white - the visible price she paid for her sorceries, a warning of her power. A kind of chosen crown. At her feet was the shallow pool of the Norns, a perfect mirror of dark water that carried her face in the center of it. Even at this hour, Kara saw the pieces of vital armor under her evening furs and silks, hard leather marked everywhere with ancient runes. She could feel the power roiling off this woman, and knew the Queen's admonishment wasn't one of pride. It was to save her life. This was not a target any of her blades could scratch.

She spent her first few seconds instead cutting off the girl who flung herself between them and Karnilla herself, some kind of defensive spell ending in a desperate gasp. The other attendant huddled in the farthest corner, eyes huge. If she didn't move, Kara wouldn't. Not until she was given no choice.

That same magical heat blazed behind Karnilla's gaze now fixed on Frigga. "Well, well. I remember a little girl of Vanaheim with cleverness in her eyes. I remember that same cleverness kept me from taking a prince for my prize a long time ago. And now that girl uses it to slip into my home." Furious or not, Karnilla bowed her head with ironic politeness. One worthy enemy to another. "You trailed my Amora through my wards. I should have realized. There was a nullness about her, a shadow in the aether. I dismissed it as her trembling link to her sister."

"As I intended, Karnilla." The Queen of Asgard stood at the other end of that black pool, her hands clasped delicately against her belly as if now she returned to her palace to hold court.

Kara swept the hall they'd come from with a glance, looking for further backup. When none was evident, she sealed the door shut and stuck a thin pin taken from her belt into the lock. A common hold, and not one that would last, but this was now a war between two sorceresses. She would hold the barricade and pray her Queen survived. Nothing more she could do now. Her belly was hard ice, knowing the outcome was not set.

Karnilla nodded. Then she smiled, slow and amused. "Gods be good. A single slide of belief, Frigga, and you could be as my own sister." She reached out a hand across the pool, palm up, fingers asking to be grasped. Bangles jingled softly, each one marked with the ancient stick-runes known among all the Nine. "You still could. These men that hold Asgard, they will never trust our kind. They will never respect us. They will stagnate, and magic will die under their fear, and the realms will, in time, fall forever."

"No. They will not." Frigga smiled back, and her hands never wavered, her fingers didn't pick nervously at each other. She was an icon of serenity, knowing this moment had waited for her to come, and it was her responsibility to live up to it. To say she was a Queen was often only a title. Now she stood as the rawest emblem of that nobility, armored and ready and between her realm and the enemy. "They will change. Perhaps not until nigh too late, but _change_ sleeps in Asgard, and hope. These things will be subtle, and the moment that hope will be born will go unrecognized at first, but I believe in this. Such is the way of history, and of the future."

Karnilla's hand faltered. That regal, calm face suddenly twisted. Kara felt the air change and threw herself to the ground before the hot winds that ruptured through the room could break her bones. Yet the assault never touched her. She saw the greenish-gold shimmer of a ward around her and looked up, seeing that Frigga remained unmoved by the attack.

In the corner, the other Nornheim girl bled badly, looking stunned. The table that slammed into her was now in pieces around her form. Kara realized she hurt a bit for the girl, knowing her own allegiances were stronger than ever. Anyone that lashed out without thinking they might harm their own was no true Queen.

Frigga's own return attack was far more subtle. No growing pressure in the air. No crackle. Instead the Queen of Asgard was suddenly not there - and then again she _was_ , close to Karnilla now, a silver athame aloft in her hand. Instead of striking like Kara might, she began to sketch a fast ritual in the air.

Karnilla whirled on her, sensing it before the ritual resolved. A slap of her hand disrupted the glowing ley lines forming, but that was all. Frigga was gone again, true invisibility cloaking her from most senses. Kara heard the pat of a single footstep, saw the trace of disturbed air across the pool. Deliberate.

 _She's_ toying _with the old bitch_ , she realized. Frigga was drawing Karnilla out, making her fight on her schedule.

With a snarl, Karnilla boiled the room with summoned heat, filling it with the stench of Muspelheim's sulfuric core. Could have been the odor of Surtr's own sweating balls, for all Kara knew, but the worst of it still never touched her. Nor did it leave an outline of the Queen for Karnilla to fix on. A shiver went down Kara's back as the girl in the corner cried in pain, knowing what was going on. Frigga was using those odd magical paths _between_ to slip unseen around the room. _That_ was the other reason she'd spent so long on the blueprints of the ancient Nornheim castle. To know where secret boundaries lay.

Karnilla would burn her energy, and Frigga would shadow-dance. Until… what?

Kara remained where she was at first. Then, realizing the ward Frigga placed was probably attached to her and not the location, she sped around the perimeter behind Karnilla and went to the injured girl.

The attendant slapped at her, easily being parried, and no doubt reasonably thinking she was going to die. Had she plunged forward like her partner, she would have. But as far as Kara was concerned, this was now a non-combatant. She wasn't going to move to help her own 'Queen' now, not if such damage was her reward. So Kara shared the protective ward as best she could, and looked for wounds to bind. These were also not methods her House had taught, but they were the results of some of the Queen's first orders to her. Mercy, where possible. So, very well.

While Karnilla tore apart the room looking for her hidden attacker, who now and then slipped through the room to build up energy only to vanish again, Kara pinned down the frightened girl's wrists and bound up the worst of the bloody tears on her skin. That began to still her, though her eyes were still huge.

"I will be Queen here, girl Frigga, and you will fall. You cannot hold your invisibility forever."

" _I don't have to._ " The whisper seemed to come from everywhere as offensive magic continued to pound through the air, hunting for her. " _I am only waiting._ "

"For what?" No answer came. Karnilla snapped her fingers, watching where strange and venomous 'lightning' coursed through the room, finding nothing. The witch-queen's gaze passed over Kara and the wounded attendant, and for a moment those dark eyes turned to embers. Kara's hand on the girl's arm tightened.

Then Karnilla staggered. A rare and direct assault, a punch of clean air against her back from that still-hidden assailant. Kara smelled it, fresh flowers and hot sunlight. A deliberate slap against Karnilla's face here in her chosen and gloomy lair, if she'd just realize it.

She didn't. She whirled, flinging out a wave of energy. That also found no target.

Across the pool of dark water, another skip of motion broke its surface. Kara glanced at it, realizing it had gone full and unnerving black.

The Norns slept, so the legends went. It would take much to awaken them, according to the ancient lore she'd read. Sacrifice. Power. Blood.

All of that was building in this room. Hovering in the air, stirring the water, dripping to the stones of the floor. The attendant girl crawled further behind her, frightened.

 _Oh, Gods_. Kara felt chilled. No creature that worked best by sacrifice was going to be a true ally to the living. But regardless, it was _Frigga_ counting on their attentions and focusing all of Karnilla's ire into enough raw magical energy to draw them out. The ritual was in the Queen's hands, and by the void that now replaced the water's calm surface, she was succeeding at it.

Kara kept the attendant girl pinned, watching the water continue to ripple softly until it began a full and violent churn. Karnilla herself barely seemed to notice. Frigga had goaded her into a full and near mindless assault, by sheer virtue of impenetrable defense.

And then. Suddenly. She was there.

The Queen of Asgard was once again at the opposite end of the pool, but before Karnilla could whirl on her and resume her attacks, Frigga dipped a steel and gold booted foot into the pool. Then her other.

The water lit up, green and blue, and then a rush of other colors that hurt Kara's eyes, for they did not exist on any mortal spectrum. Black lightning sparked across it, then gold, and within it, she saw the shapes. Afterimages burned onto a retina, a gleam of a shadow across the wall. But nonetheless, they all knew what was now come.

The Norns were awake.

 _this we dreamed and still dream. a queen and a reflection of a queen. which of you is the reflection and which of you is true? this is the palaver. when it ends, there will be costs. answer us, and answer us full. which of you?_

"I am!" roared Karnilla, her hands lowering, realizing suddenly what was now in motion, what was at stake. "I am, who have sat at the edge of your pool all these years and sung to you, pleading for the gifts of your wisdom."

Frigga looked into the churning water around her ankles. "I do not sing to you, and I will never plead. I am Frigga, born of Vanaheim, daughter of Jarl and sorceress, Queen of Asgard, and I remember you."

 _one pleas and one commands. which is the way of queens? is our riddle already answered?_

Not to be outdone, Karnilla stepped forward, putting her own slippered toes in the water. "The old ways are remembered but they are also past. I must forge a new way, on the bones of the old."

The water roiled, sickly and thick. Kara could hear the attendant girl gasping for breath, horrified. Maybe it was her own breath. There were _things_ in that water. The Norns might wear the shape of women and be their patron in the arts of magic, but they were not mortal woman or held their understanding. If they had ever been. And yet the Queen stared into the black, steadfast. "Burying the past is a crime that will be paid with the blood of a future in that very shape. Can a Queen carry her people forward knowing that all that waits for them are cold bones and no history?"

 _we hear you both. such words. but words are air and breath and both are gone with life._

"Then let me show you action. I would sacrifice myself for my people. Karnilla would not. Not ever. She would feed you those that trusted her to gather that wisdom and power she craves for herself." Frigga's eyes met Kara, and in them, stoic and in the deadliest part of this strange battle, Kara saw her pride. She stepped deeper into the pool, fearless, the water now lapping at her thighs. She looked at Karnilla next. "Step in further. Show them your heart, if you think I lie about you."

Karnilla breathed, said nothing, stepped further in. She had no choice, not against that barb. Her hands were dead white, knowing the trap she'd led herself into.

"They know your soul, Karnilla. If either of us lie now, they'll tear us apart." The water was now over Frigga's hips. "You wanted them awake, to acknowledge the true rulership of Asgard at last. I've given you that. They'll know who is meant to wear the crown."

"You've given me nothi-" Karnilla's voice ended in a scream. Her white hands turned red, like boiling crabs. Kara realized it was blood. Blood, pouring out through her skin in a horrific rush, the first punishment for her lie. Here in the pool, the Norns held total control over that piece of life.

 _she gave you a chance_ , said the Norns, and the multitudinous voice was conviction itself, clear over the screams. _the right of queens before the supplicant and the challenger. she gave you a choice._

 _we see you both_. _we see you clear, now. the dreams stand plain. come and witness_.

 _come and see._

 _come and see._

 _oh, come down with us, little Karnilla, and see everything you desired to see. let us love you then, for your mistakes._

The water boiled up, and took the sorceress down in a typhon's snarl, but when Karnilla was gone, the pillar of black water stood in the shape of a body. Waves lapped at the Queen. Now Kara _knew_ she was breathing hard. There was nothing else she could do.

 _you used us_. They sounded amused, of all things. _we dreamed that, too_.

"I used her hunger and her ego."

 _nonetheless. in the end, it was you that woke us. we take her for the darkness inside her, for her offense. but we have a debt, queen of asgard_. _you woke us, and we took the realm's enemy. as compact once spoke - prophecies and blood_.

"I will honor that debt. But we have a problem, ladies of the Norn. We have a flaw, and it is one I nearly make myself. I must needs bring Karnilla back to my throne, alive, as my prisoner."

 _now_ that _is ego_.

"That is the judgment of a Queen, and you will heed it. You've consumed pieces of her already, for her sins against our craft and your home. You've slaked yourself on what was owed. Give her body back to me, and we will end the rest of this, as the living must. Your end for all of her is too cruel for me to permit."

 _then you must bargain for her, as if you would any living soul of your realm. you must take responsibility for her, and know our displeasure_.

"So I must be responsible, Norns. So I must." Frigga spread her hands, and still they did not shake. "But I will _not_ bargain. Again, I command you. Give me my prisoner. Name me your debt. I know what I can bear. I accept it. And after, you return to your dream until another consults you in need."

 _then we curse you with knowledge. we will give you this awful weight_ , said the Norns, and for a horrifying second, that black wave seemed to consume Frigga as well. A whisper filled the room, but there were no words in it Kara couldn't understand. The Queen and the Norns talked for crawling minutes.

Then it was over, and the pool was once again a harmless mirror. Frigga was pale, but still she stood. A second later, the mirror broke one last time, and the shivering wreck of Karnilla was splayed across the opposite stones.

"Your Majesty?" Kara couldn't keep a waver out of her voice.

"It is over, Kara." Frigga looked at the frightened girl behind her, the bone weariness in her voice kept almost inaudible. "You, there. You will help lead us out, and you will help my Kara drag my prisoner to the gates of this castle. As they see her, they will let us pass safely. Do this, and you will be given not only mercy, but the Queen's freedom and forgiveness. And of course, given to our healers."

"Y-Your Majesty." The girl bowed her head.

"Karnilla. Are you conscious?"

The head of the fallen sorceress shook as it lifted, facing the Queen. Frigga looked down into her, pitiless, and Kara couldn't see what passed between them. "Good. Then let us step out, unafraid, and see this war end at last."


	19. Chapter 19

19.

. . .

Kara witnessed the execution of Karnilla at dawn the next day from her place by the Queen's silent side, knowing even as Odin approached Karnilla's bound body with the ancient hammer in his hands that the old sorceress would feel nothing. Frigga bade her slip the prisoner the cloudy vial during the guard change. By her judgment, Karnilla had been broken enough to be permitted to die never knowing more pain. Most of her had already left when the Norns pulled her into wherever it was they slept and ruled over such prophetic dreams. Kara had seen the lost dullness in her eyes even before she drank down the soporific. The Queen of Asgard won the war, unconditionally.

Odin crossed the green field before the palace, the rainbow bridge gleaming in the sun behind the crowd and showering them with its light. His sons stood at the palace doors, proud and at attention. They had met the Queen at one of the forward lines the eve before as a late message commanded them to, and guided they her and her prisoner home. Once she'd seen them all safe from the thickest part of trees, Kara slipped away to ride ahead to the palace and resume her hidden place.

The All-Father lifted the hammer with its starborn heart with hands that were old but still strong and powerful, and it was done.

Messengers would ride out next to be sure the realms knew the traitor queen was gone, and in time the last rebel holdouts would dwindle. The war was now over, but not everyone would understand that at the same time. Such was the nature of these things.

The last battle of Asgard, however, came when Kara stood later, still at the side of the Queen, listening along as Odin absorbed the tale of how his prisoner came to the altar of slaughter. When Frigga finished telling him what she would, it was Kara in her handmaiden's dress that one eye stayed on.

"And you permitted my wife to stand afield, put herself in the way of danger despite your contract to avoid exactly that."

"Your Majesty." Kara felt Frigga stiffen next to her, angry with her husband. "I cannot command my Queen, nor my King. I made my recommendations known, and then I did my job at her side in the halls of Nornheim to the best of my ability. The Queen is home, safe, by my blade and my word."

"Your recommendations." Odin flicked that lone eye's gaze between the two women, all three of him knowing his anger was unreasonable, all three knowing it burned hot, regardless. "Fortunate for you she does indeed return home safe." He looked at Frigga next. " _Are_ you safe, my love? If the Norns awakened as you both say-"

"The Norns are our people, in their way. They heard their Queen and did as they were bade." She was stone, not letting his anger touch her, her own kept bottled inside. "Kara served as she always does, perfectly, and at my command."

Odin glanced at the girl again, distrusting. "I would again have it said that, to me, the real protection would have been not allowing such danger in the first place."

"You would have me cage your own Queen?" The words fell out of her, an angry and thoughtless blurt at the way he tried to shift blame to her. She felt Frigga grab her arm, cold fingers against her hot skin. Odin stared at her while she tried to temper her tone. "Your Majesty, I could never. Her will is her own. I must guard life with my own life, but I _cannot_ be her warden."

"I am forced to repeat my maid, to be certain you understand what you say. Would you bottle me up, like Laufey did his Queen?" Frigga's hand was still cool on Kara's arm, and her words were meant to draw his ire and his eye back to herself. "I warned you, my husband. I told you outright we were going to see Karnilla's end this time. You must not chide Kara for my decisions, not when they were made with the protection of all of Asgard in mind."

"I trusted to your wisdom, and to your cunning, as I did the last time we warred with her." The heat was on his lips again.

"And your trust is repaid in full. It is over, Odin. She is gone. Peace will return to us for a time."

" _At what cost?_ "

"At the cost of the innocence of our sons, at the cost of traitors proving they could embed themselves among even us - which your councilors missed, even as one of our sons tried to warn them - at the cost of new scars and this anger, and now living in an era in which the Norns woke, which is always a dark tiding. I could do no else but pay my own price. With my life if it had to be, with my neck on the line. Such, my husband, is our way. A warrior's way."

Odin looked away from them both, burying his anger under the furrow of his brow. "One of those traitors has survived. We hold the one. The other is gone aground, as Karnilla herself did long ago."

"So she has. In time, little Amora may become her own new threat. Maybe she even will come for her sister." Frigga bowed her head once. "And when she does, we will see her destroyed for it. As we did what made her."

Odin grunted. Countless battles behind him that marked him a god of war itself, but against his Queen, he was outmatched. "As you say, Frigga. As you say." He lifted one hand, outreached, in supplication. "We will send another word out then. For peace. For victory. For parades and flags and for the memories of what we lost. We will cherish what we can, in the quiet you have earned for us."

"My husband." Frigga bowed her head, sounding pleased with his elegant acceptance of defeat. Kara did the same, but she felt Odin's one eye coming back to her, as ever placing the remnants of his anger anywhere else he could but where he loved.

. . .

"I never knew how easily she'd be willing to go afield. Risk herself so completely. Certainly I knew she could be fearless against any family threat, but…" Loki couldn't help sounding troubled. There were pieces to the story Kara didn't tell him, things he could sense were not his business. Private moments, memories. He could extrapolate much, but in his ears, the end of the war with Karnilla pieced itself together, mostly intact.

"That was not the first time she fought on her own terms, prince. And it certainly wasn't the last." Kara sighed from where she'd retaken her chair at the far side of the storage room, rubbing at her arms and looking tired. She managed a laugh, however, small and wry. "I was there for much of it, mostly standing interference between her and her chosen enemy. On the whole, I'm not certain if she wanted a protector and blade at her side so much as an accomplice she could rely on. And whether she intended it or not, I was also often her buffer from the king's anger."

Loki absorbed that, the room full of the soft scents of warm honey and warmer earth. "You won't believe me, but I'm sympathetic to such things."

She snorted, studying the irregularities in the rough hewn floor. "I shouldn't believe, no, but she also gave him hell on your behalf for more than one oddly similar tale in my hearing, so it passes by virtue of outside reporting. Gods, she was furious with the councilors for setting aside your missive regarding spies in the house of kings. There was a reorganization after that, by Odin's command. It wasn't _all_ due to the end of wartime."

It hurt to be reminded of that. Hurt to remember her faith in him. "I recall some of that. Frigga personally asked for Jarl Ulf to be sent to the high table, for his service to the family." He hadn't asked Frigga to do it, didn't think he was permitted. But she'd paid attention to his tales, and that had been the result.

"She knew you liked the old man, and set stock in that. His twilight years must have been comfortable ones. A good ending for a fine old warrior." Now she was studying the candles, while he remembered the somber but also warm ceremony granted Ulf's last voyage to the end of the realm's magicked sea. He'd personally given the command to the archer and his flaming arrow, and the grief he'd felt had been honest, then. "I think his grandchildren still hold those border fields under his name. Never transferred it off to another lineage. Not common. Not entirely rare, either, but he was liked by this palace, and that meant a thing then. When the glitter and the gold was no facade."

"It isn't a facade." His voice sounded heavy even to his ears. "Never was, never is. Asgard is what it is, Kara, despite whatever's holding the throne." She glanced at him for his choice of words, but she also didn't remark on it to interrupt him. "But there's always more to it than the glory. Even golden towers cast black shadows."

That hung in the silence for a time, the air clogged thick and still with the fragrance of all their memories, of the ghosts watching them. If they judged, Loki couldn't guess what those judgments were.

"Yes. I suppose they do." Kara shifted in her chair, breaking the stillness, if softly. "What really happened to you?"

"I assumed you knew." He forced himself to sound neutral, feeling the ache.

"What, your fall from the bridge? The great family secret that led to it?" Kara shook her head, not looking at him. Her hands hung loose between her knees, and she studied faint scars at their tips. "I learned some of that, yes, ever at my place at her side. It explained a few things of old. I used to pass a lot of sealed messages between her and Jotunheim's imprisoned Queen. Others, too, and even on behalf of the King now and then, so it wasn't unusual for me to commit such journeys. But of them all, I saw the ice the most. Never really questioned it. Their warriors were our oldest enemy, and their shaman prisoner was a wise woman. Frigga would of course speak to her, try to mend what the warriors of both realms never could. I never guessed there might be another reason underneath, not then. She's come to new rule, I hear, Farbauti. I wish her well of it." A flick of her gaze, a gleam at the corner of her eye. He heard no learned hate of frost giants in her voice, itself a wonder. "But you were changing before that."

"I don't know what you mean." Liar. He didn't fully want to lie, but it was an old one that laid atop countless marks he didn't want to start bleeding again.

Kara sat in her chair, still examining the faint lines across her hands, and she didn't challenge him.

By her face, Loki could see she knew what he knew. That ached, too. The crease above her eyes was clear disappointment. The bleeding began anyway, all the old hurt, so he snapped it out. "What do you want me to say?"

"The truth is always a good start, but perhaps it doesn't matter anymore." She got up from her chair and crossed to the shrine, tracing her fingertips across a bundle of dried flowers. They sprinkled bright pollen to the wooden shelf underneath and he recognized them with a twist under his rib. "You've got your story, prince. The Queen, like everyone that's ever breathed, was more than any one person can know. I knew one piece of her, the king another, Thor another yet, and you knew your own version. Sometimes these shards overlap. Sometimes that's how we try to remember the lost, piecing together what we can until we see the whole a little better. But never all. We only know ourselves, in the end. If even that."

Her voice dripped irony as if it were that same honey scent that filled the room. "A shame you won't speak to the others who might tell you more of what you could use to honor her. Not just one bridge lay broken."

He sat there, pain pulsing under his skin. _And how little do I still know of you_ , he could have said, but he knew the counterattack he'd get for the attempt. He'd earned none of that. They didn't know each other, because she was not just a handmaiden and he'd been a prince. And one of the few times it might have been more valuable to disobey the Queen, his mother, he hadn't. He'd done what he always did when he'd been chided, rightful or not. He buried it down until it festered. Like every scar from Thor's friends who saw him a little strange, or accidental slight from that brother that would always burn brighter than he could. Like being set aside by Odin, always questioning. Why he was never quite good enough.

No, she was right. He'd started to break well before the mirror split at the reveal of who he really was, confirming every black fear of his life, telling him he really didn't belong. All those years feeling just a little out of place, always wondering why. Until he didn't have to wonder any longer. And by then, he'd made sure he was alone to try and bear it. Ulf was long dead, the handmaidens were not his friends, nor did he share Thor's love for his shield-kin.

All he'd had were dead, dry books. And Frigga's hope.

And what had he done with that?

"I…" Loki didn't know what he was trying to say, so he stopped himself and looked at that bundle of dead fae-flowers instead. That same crack of the mirror was now in his voice, and he hated it more than he hated himself.

He realized Kara was looking at him strangely, and the curiosity in her expression was even worse. There wasn't any hate in her face. There was the disappointment, old sorrow, weariness, and even anger. But still, she didn't hate him. Like Frigga never had. This last living piece of some hidden legacy of the Queen's. Someone she'd left behind, who carried the same sorrows he held, for much the same reasons. Someone that could have understood, if he'd just spoken up. Long ago.

Or now.

Something was boiling inside him, threatening to choke. Everything hurt. He didn't know what he wanted. Also a lie. He knew exactly what he wanted. It was something he would never have, and never earn, and so it went back down in the hole and he covered it all up with what was familiar. What was safe in its way. Being alone, where no one else could touch him again, or hurt him, or break him.

She was still looking at him, and she didn't hate him, and it was driving him crazy all over again. His mind, once an ornate but effective machine, snapped and ground itself to pieces in chaos.

 _You need to hate, don't you understand, you need to. I am not safe. I am the monster._

"It's late, prince, and I don't expect you'll give up your end of the deal tonight. I want to go rest," said Kara, not hearing the way his thoughts roared at him. "You might as well try, for your own damned sake."

"Damned," said Loki, and the laugh rattled its way out. He slid from the boxes and stepped once towards the door, upright but unsteady. There was a wall close to his side, and he put his hand out to feel its coolness under his palm. "I'll give you something better than Odin, Lady Kara, in return for the gift of your tale."

She looked at him, and her eyes were uncertain at the changes in his voice.

"Wouldn't you rather have her real killer?" His words now turned into liquid smoke, half-mad, hating everything. Under it, the request. Same request he'd made in the past. Same thought he'd held, letting go of Odin at the edge of the sundering bridge. _Do it_.

"What do you mean?"

"It wasn't his fault, Kara. It just wasn't his. I'm going to tell you the truth, exactly like you wanted, and if you look at me closely you'll know it. I'm vowing you this, under the eyes of Gods, before Frigga's shrine. I'm going to be honest."

She was watching him, and something stayed shadowed behind her gaze.

Loki laughed, hollow and cracking, waiting for the second her hand would go for the dagger, and he knew he would be glad for it. His voice rang out, full of that self-loathing, that itself the granted gift that would tell Kara he spoke in honesty.

"It was _mine_."


	20. Chapter 20

20.

. . .

Loki felt the hard slam of the stone wall into his back, knocking most of the air from his lungs, but his gaze stayed focused on the arm braced against his throat. Under the sleeve of her evening tunic, he saw the peek of a hard black leather bracer. More than that, he felt its rigidity pressing implacably against his throat. It was hard to swallow past it, his mouth gone instantly dry and desperate. The smell of the Queen's incense was on her fingers.

But there was no threat from the dagger. His gaze slid to it, waiting. It was in Kara's other hand, yes, but it was also not pointed at him. Not yet. He wouldn't look at her face, though it was only inches away from his. He could feel her stare. That was enough to tell him how the temperature between them had changed.

"Why did you say that?" The words were breathed at him, her voice modulated in a clinical, monotone way that made it harder yet for him to struggle. She still had complete control, even in her fury. He realized how much that disconcerted him, that strength. It typically meant the anger underneath it was dangerous enough to demand it.

"I told you," he choked out. "Because it's the truth."

The bracer against his throat increased in pressure. "You were in your cell. I know that much. I wasn't here, but I know that much." He was thumped against the wall again, harder yet. His lungs scraped hot for breath, blood thumping in his ears. "You weren't let out till later. So how in Hel can you tell me this and say it true?"

"I ca-" He was fighting for air, unwilling and instinctive panic beginning to tingle cold through his body. If she were going to kill him this way, it was going to be slow and unpleasant. His scalp began to crawl. "Can't-"

The pressure lessened on his throat, slightly, but the wall still threatened to crush his spine. She was smaller than him, of course, but he could feel trained musculature and how she carefully, quickly moved into firmer leverage against him, making sure he couldn't break free. "Now you can."

"I told the dark elves where to go." He gasped it out, more truth, more now than he'd wanted to give. Was she going to make him relieve it? "I sent them to her."

He could see the knife tip, and despite that control, it shook in time to her words. Mocking fury. "What, so you sat there during their riot and drew them up a tour map?"

"I di-"

"What _exactly_ did you say?" The bracer shifted downward, creating a sense of almost explosive pressure against his breastbone. "Quit fucking around and tell me precisely what you said."

"They wouldn't let me out. Wiser than that. Knew what I was. I was angry. Angry with them, angry with Odin. I said-" She thumped him again. "I said 'Take the stairs on the left.'"

"And?"

 _And what? What else is there?_ He was fighting a howl of a laugh, choking on its grandness when he had no long breath for even a gasp. Words kept stuttering out of him, each one scrabbling against his throat. "How the fuck do you think they got to her? One wrong turn in this place and Gods know where you might end up, and with just a little nudge from me, they ended up with her."

Kara slammed him again against the wall, the hardest attack yet, tearing all the rest of the air from his lungs and leaving him with burning nausea and a thumping headache. She left him to slide down to land on his ass, unsupported, and he was in her shadow. Again. Loki didn't look up, busy rubbing at his throat through the tangle of his hair stuck fast to his sweaty neck, trying to remember how to breathe. He could hear her doing something similar, that tight control fading into the ragged sound of some mix of deadly emotion. "I-"

"Shut up." She stepped away from him. "Not another word. Not from you."

He coughed instead. Felt saliva come back, tasting like gravel.

"You think this your fault." He saw her booted ankles go by, beginning to pace. Her words were a whisper, thoughtful, still harsh. "You think you did this. You think you're the one that deserves judgment."

Loki dragged in a breath. She swatted at his head to fend him off before he could say anything to that, fingertips dragging across his brow in a warning. No harm, all threat. He kept his eyes to the stones, looking at the web of cracks in the mortar. No marble for the storage rooms, and here the age of Asgard began to show.

"Now you try to drag everything down around your ears. Tear apart what it means to be a king. Get me to take you instead of Odin. I was her weapon, prince. I'm not yours. You don't get to use me. Gods, I thought you were buying time. You're trying to buy a _death_. You utter bastard. I'd almost accept that as clever except for the part where I'm absolutely fucking furious with you."

Another cough. He kept his head bowed, no longer trying to speak. What could he say? He hadn't even known it was the raw truth, until moments ago. The hate was that strong.

 _You're so perceptive about everyone but yourself_.

"The Queen, you absolutely daft excuse for a noble's son, would _never_ ask me to turn a hand against you. Never. Not for your shit mistakes, or your rubbish judgment. All the monstrosity in the galaxy, the one thing any person under this roof knew for singular fact is that you wouldn't ever turn on her."

Loki's face blazed up at her, ready to scream that that was _exactly_ what he'd done, betrayed her trust straight into the arms of Death.

Kara bent and slapped him before the first word could form on his lips, clean and sharp and full-force, straight across the face. He slumped against the wall, defeated. "Declare your guilt to a priest or a whore, I'm not your confessional. I'm not your tool. My contract was to the Queen, and still I serve it. She would _never_ turn on you, nor hate you, nor ask for this. I have no choice but to honor that faith of hers."

He reached up and touched the hot mark that emblazoned his cheek, feeling his skin sting. He wanted to know what her opinion was, if she finally hated, but the words weren't going to come.

"I'm done with this. I'm done with you. Carry your guilt for a foolish word spoken, that's your burden. You still didn't commit the worst of it. The man that did, he stood between me and my duty. He refused to listen. To her. To me. The elves were coming. We knew they were going to strike, weren't certain how. Wanted Thor's girl, but all of you were safe in the palace." Kara was pacing again, and now she sounded off balance. He watched her as best as he could with his lowered gaze. "The king demanded I run message to Vanaheim to regather the Einherjar posted there, so they could strengthen the holdfasts in the city if the ships came. I knew the fastest route. If Heimdall sang warning, he wanted all to be mustered. I protested the command. In full defiance of him, smelling threat, I said no, Your Majesty, I plead to stay. And you know what he did?"

Loki coughed, his skull still thumping, hearing the trap in her words. He stayed silent, and he listened.

"He rejected me outright. All of you were in the palace, and the palace is safe, he told me. Nothing's _ever_ safe, prince. Here I am to prove it.

"I fought him, and I fought, and he roared me down for my insolence and chided me again for my consistent poor attitude with him while the Queen was away looking over the human girl. How _safe_ they would all be with the king at their side. And given no choice I went and took a horse and a fast path to Vanaheim, and while I stood in a guardsman's stinking office in my useless handmaiden's dress, the Queen bled out while her son and the self-same king that sent me away stood over her."

Loki looked up at her, and saw the black eclipse of her face. Her eyes were full dark, and her lips were twisted in the sneer of all her furies. That fine control was gone, and he saw her. She bent down and hissed at him, and he saw. " _I should have been here_. And you cower at me and try to force my hand, and now you stand between us, and play your games with your own guilts." She rose and turned away again, heels softly padding towards the door before he understood everything else he'd seen in the shadows of her face. He sat there, shocked, as she continued to spit. "I am done with you. I am done with this. Suffer yourself. If it's not to gain me Odin himself, then I waste my time."

"Wait," he managed to croak, looking at her back. "Please."

"No," said Kara. She slipped through the door, shutting it behind her with paradoxical calm.

He waited, still slumped on the floor, but he didn't hear the lock. He didn't hear anything. It took him several minutes to struggle up to his feet, his body hammered by her rage and his exhaustion. He managed to limp his way to the door, his hand on the handle, and found it opening easily in his hand.

With a nudge, it swung wide and let him see the other half of the hidden lair. It didn't matter much now. He saw the bedroll she'd been using, and a clean and open box where she'd undoubtedly kept her notes and her maps, and there were likely hidden nooks all around him. But almost all the traces of her presence had vanished.

At the end of the bedroll was a place in the dust where the imprint of a bag had left its mark. Whatever she'd carried with her to this lair had been there, and now it was gone, too. Loki lifted up his head to look at the far end of the room, with its other open door. Beyond it was a snarl of old tunnels. Kara had disappeared, slipping away as she had that first night, and now she left him no trail to follow.

Gone. Maybe forever.

On her face, that last expression. He knew that expression well, worn it himself, a rictus of vengeance and anger and that bitter old friend, self-loathing. He understood more than he was supposed to know. Another secret stolen, and he hadn't meant to. "It's not quite wholly Odin you hate, either, is it?" Loki said to the empty bedroll. He nodded, slow, his head an anvil at a busy forge, and he said nothing else.

. . .

He stood in the silence of Kara's abandoned room for a while, looking around, wondering if she might have left anything behind in the hidden places. Loki traced his hands across the walls, feeling a loose stone here or there, but behind them was nothing. Always nothing. She gave him no piece of herself to keep, and that was all he deserved anyway. He put the stones back, and after one more pass through the room, he sat down on the cold bedroll and thought about how much he didn't want to go back to Odin's chambers.

Ever, if he were going to be honest. Here in the dark, the candles in the other room, and silence once again his only friend, Loki could afford that piece of honesty. Just once. He wanted none of it any longer, remembering that long ago, if only for a while, he'd been true when he said he never wanted to be rightful king of Asgard.

Well, the truth was still his to claim. He was not here by earned right. Nothing in the palace was his, and even his old rooms belonged to some long dead ghost that yet had more substance to it than he did right here and now. He had failed. He was no king, just another shadow. The kingdom was going to fall from his grasp in fast dwindling time, and here in the silence, he knew he deserved that much and more. That was his destiny.

Wasn't it written in all those foolish books of mortal myth? He tried not to laugh. The humans might like this outcome, if they knew. They'd defeated him again, and this time with the kinds of stories that had been his only refuge.

Another hour passed, and he got up and went back into the room with its shrine to watch as the candles guttered down into darkness. Loki didn't have the heart to blow them out, only to wait until they disappeared with a puff of smoke in his nostrils, and the blackness of the room closed all around him. It was almost comforting. Almost.

He picked up those dead fae-flowers in the remaining gloom, feeling the last of the dry pollen sprinkle onto his fingertips. He thought to crush the tiny bouquet into dust, but he couldn't do that, either. He couldn't make another corpse of a better memory, a different end for that memory already finished at his hands. He set them back down instead, right where Kara had put them, and he knew she had known who he was that night. With all she was capable of, of course she'd at least suspected then, and maybe another reason why she wouldn't kill him. Just perhaps. But that was ago, and _ago_ was the palace of the dead.

The shrine would be left in peace. He could do that much. He turned and went back into Kara's hidden room, and saw that of course it was still empty. She was a woman who kept her word. She was not going to come back, let him lie at her some more. She would never be a friend, much less would she ever be more, and that was his doing, too. At the very least, maybe he had finally won her hate. Better for her, he thought again. Safer, at least. Get her well away from what remained of the last family of Asgard, before it fully destroyed her, too.

Loki bent and patted the flat pillow that was part of the cheap and simple bed. He laid down this time and put his still-hurting head on it, curling up like a child, wondering when the councilors and Thor and furious Heimdall would come to pull the false king down from the throne, and for the first time in months he slept deeply and well.


	21. Chapter 21

21.

. . .

Accepting the coming defeat and a night's true rest made the illusion of the king wear lightly on Loki for once, and he passed silent through the halls where the Einherjar knew not to look the All-Father in his one good eye. He walked with new ease to the room where the councilors gathered, where almost always at least one or two stood by to discuss the issues at hand, and this morning he found the grand hall empty.

Loki, as the king, stepped with empty serenity to the head of the long table, where wars had been planned, and lands were parceled out to worthy lords, and where rites of succession were rewritten plain when new royal babes were born, and he spread his hands on the ancient slab of knotty wood and felt the coolness of the morning air under his own skin. A good feeling, if hollow. A flutter reached his ears and he looked up, but there were still no councilors come to heed him. He didn't expect any of _them_ , but nor did he find anyone at all.

He looked right, towards the broad and open window and its silken curtain, and he saw one of Odin's twin ravens sitting there on the sill, looking at him. Of course they did not speak to him, and Loki never cared for them much, but still, they flew around Asgard on their terms, seeing what they would and thinking what they liked. "Which one are you?" Loki asked the raven in his own voice, knowing the birds always saw his truer face anyway. He thought it might be Huginn, but he also thought he could be wrong. "Little shit or bigger shit?"

The raven cawed once at him, low and harsh, and he cheerfully, madly assumed the response translated to _eat shit_. There was a clean and empty goblet near to hand, and he whisked it up and promptly flung it towards the window where it clanked hard against the sill. He wasn't aiming for the bird, mindless harm to animals not something he enjoyed, but it cawed insult at him again and winged off, like he wanted.

The rest of the table was bare. No daily papers sat, no pile of scrolls, and Loki already knew what that meant. He stood there for a long time, staring at the far side, and thinking of all the dead men he had met in life, and all the ones he had killed.

The footsteps of an approaching guard told him to put his mask back on, and unwillingly he did. The Einherjar wore the full gold armor of his role and a tense expression under his helm, and Loki knew what he was going to be told before the man said it. "Your Majesty. There has been an incident in the cells."

Loki inclined Odin's bearded face, the gesture telling the guard to continue.

"A crack in the walls of the Vrellnexian quarter. It fell to pressure from within and-"

"And he is gone. Heimdall." Loki leaned his rump against the table, feeling the gold robe whisk against his legs. He nodded, slow and peaceful, a man told of his fatal disease and accepting it with the grace of one who has been long ready for it.

"We've sent patrols into the woods to follow him, sire, but we're having trouble keeping trail."

"He will see you coming." Loki chuckled, Odin's old and amused rattle. "As he sees all who come for him. Tell the patrols to do their best, but it is in the hands of fate now. I accept their failures, and the men should not fret."

"Your Majesty?"

'Odin' waved the young guard off, turning back to the table.

"Your Majesty, should I summon the councilors?"

"Don't bother them." _Sedition and conspiracy needs silence, if not speed. Which side gets to me first? Him, or them, and will it be today?_ He laughed again, and he heard the guard's armor creak, uncertain at the sound of it. "I will be in the libraries. There will be no need to consult me for some hours."

"Of course, my King." The footsteps marched off, firmer again.

He still had his books, and the riddles, and the magic. All the dead things Frigga had left to him, not knowing what had been made with them. He also had his silences, and his solitudes. Loki thought he might at least return to those old comforts for company, before he saw the flames of his end lick at the horizon.

. . .

There was an answer in the books, always had been if he were going to be honest, but it wasn't the one he wanted. All the years studying the paths between, like Frigga taught him, all the paths between planar dimensions and multiverses and the grey line between real and false, order and chaos, and the answer was simple enough, after all. Just not the one he thought he needed, his centuries spent looking for an alternative in the words of madmen and outcasts.

Falling was simple. Loki had already done so countless times. The landing, now _that_ was sticky. He closed the old tome, another sorcerous heresy dug up from the dustiest parts of the libraries where only he knew the paths among the convoluted stacks now, and he thought about dying, and he realized he wasn't ready to face that again. Not by the hands of others he didn't trust, who would want his pain more than his death. But there were few options left, and Kara would not strike him down in a gentler way, and besides, she was gone. He wasn't ready, but it was going to come.

The hidden thing inside said Kara was already missed, but it was a whisper, and he didn't deserve to feel anything about her, so he buried it again.

Loki kept only the books in his thoughts, and the scent of Frigga still in the ancient air. Loki sighed, knowing sunset was crawling towards him. Maybe one more dawn was left to him in freedom, while decisions came, and final plots took shape. The councilors almost certainly didn't yet know the secret lurking in the palace, they were working on the assumption that the king was too old and broken to lead effectively. _What the hell,_ he figured, still oddly calm. They were right. If this struggled on too much longer, there would be left behind all new cracks in the realm that would need expert healing. He hadn't intended to break the entire kingdom, despite what Kara accused. He'd only wanted to finish breaking himself.

Now, Heimdall knew the truth of what hid in the golden towers, but Heimdall would also be alone. The councilors wouldn't believe him outright, not without proof. He had been cast into the cells as a traitor, with more than one decision against a given order not weighed in his favor. He would sway them, of course, but it would take time, unless there was another factor.

And that 'other factor' was obvious. Thor. Everything hinged on Thor, who had seen for himself the unsteady king of Asgard. If the councilors were working on him with their pleas, if Heimdall made his way to his side. Or, as Loki expected, considering the weight of judgement due for what he'd done, it would come down to both factions baying like direwolves for his own pale neck.

It would be Thor flinging open the grand doors to the throne room, tearing him down and demanding the mask torn free. If he himself chose to wait there, for the end of it all. It was fate, Loki decided. Sooner or later most worlds had a story where one sibling felt he had no choice but to destroy the other. And he was the one who belonged on the altar of slaughter. He thought of Karnilla's death, and was envious that she had died in something almost like peace. After first enduring what hell she had earned, to be true.

Loki took up the few books he had left to study, a tall flask of a good wine, and the sealed letter he'd retrieved a few hours ago in response to a formal word of his own, and then he brought it all back to one of the royal wings high in the towers. Not Odin's room, not his own. He chose a small but pleasant residential lounge that had been used by one of the Queen's handmaidens for a century or so before rotating on for novelty's sake, spreading the books on a slender golden table, and then setting the letter aside, wondering what he was going to do with it. It amounted to a proof of his last royal command, and he was content with it, but this copy also had no place to go.

"Heimdall found Thor in the city this afternoon. His disguise was simple but good, yet I still saw him. Expect he saw me just as plain, but it didn't matter. I wasn't going to interfere. I trailed them both to the edge of the hunter's forest, and they went deeper in. Torches later. Two, maybe three of the fiduciary lords of the council taking the same paths. I didn't recognize them, except for their livery. Younger men. Still hot-blooded, no doubt."

Loki licked his lips as he traced his fingers across one of the books, thinking at first that he was hallucinating again. Voices returning to haunt and harry, like they had before Kara came. But they'd never sounded like her before. He realized this was real, and he was still awake, and she had come back. Despite what he'd seen on her face the night before, the idea that he had finally won her hate, she was here now. He didn't know why. There wasn't anything left to him to hunt. "Go away. You said you were gone, so best stay that."

"If they find you here, they're going to kill you. Thor isn't going to be able to stay the hand of every outraged lord. If he tries, they'll go into the city and rile everyone till all know what actually happened here. They'll tear you to pieces. Right now I expect the lords yet act as if it's just some shameful secret, for his sake. A little like Odin did to start all of this. I know you know that. Is all that what you actually want?"

"Go. Away."

"I can't, prince." She sounded tired, her voice echoing against the space of the window. Like usual. Already a familiar, now strangely comforting thing, and Loki couldn't turn around. "I said a thing in anger, and it was my turn to lie. She asked me to promise her, a long time ago. She kept my contract long after the war, despite the price the House asked for such retainment, and I stayed close and I served all this time, because she wanted to be sure someone would look out for her family, no matter what. She wouldn't want you to die, and I have to at least try to honor that promise. Because she asked me to, and it's really all I have left to remember her by."

He knew about the contract, yes. It was in Odin's private files, the ones locked beyond a library cellgate, wedged in deep under a box of dull scrips that marked personal purchases from the galaxy beyond. Easy for Loki to find once he thought to look for it, because he'd broken in many times before out of curiosity and that need to know what was not meant for him to know. "It's over, one way or another. I hope you didn't think you were going to be able to save me."

"You'd have to want to save yourself. I'm good, prince, but I can't do miracles. You made it plain last night to us both. You want to die."

"I've been dying since I fell from the rainbow bridge, Lady Kara." He laughed, thinking back to a year of hell itself. "They forced a quick pulse back into me while that son of a bitch watched, but I'm not sure it counts for a new life. Not for what I've done since. Not for what I am."

"You regret it."

"Regret what? Living? Dying?" He turned, looking at where she sat, her gloved hands folded on her lap. The blades were still at her hip, clasped tight in their sheaths. "Being born?"

She looked back at him, and her face was pure sorrow. "All of it."

He nodded, tired again. "Maybe I do."

"It wasn't all horror and hell. Couldn't have been."

"No, but it's where it's been ending."

"If you let it."

Loki scoffed. "It's no longer up to me, Lady Kara. Might've been it never was. I don't think I can escape this destiny. Even if I tried, it all leads back to some other shape of that old Ragnarok. I die, we die, it all falls apart. _The center cannot hold_. I read that in a human book, of all things, while I was waiting to see how the minions I'd forced together under my control were going to help me betray their own. I am that rough beast they wrote of, and my hour is here. But not to be born." He looked back to the desk, reaching out for the old heresy and feeling the corners of its pages flicker against his thumb. "I tried to rule them. Humans. Small and simple, I thought. But they have a vengeance in them fit to match Asgard's, and not all their words were dull."

"The Queen had a number of opinions about misjudging the people of our realms. I'm sorry you forgot them."

"Yes. I did." He heard her shift. "Don't go."

Still tired, now Kara also sounded wry. "Well, I'm confused. What do you want?"

He knew. He didn't know. He didn't have any right to ask, and his hand kept toying with the edges of the last book he had on the forbidden pathways. "I owe you an apology."

"Or five. This has been a complicated set of encounters, prince, and I still seem to be leaving with the short end. Such goes these deals made with you. I'd be lying again if I said I were overly surprised."

Loki laughed and shook his head, and it felt oddly light as it rose out of his chest. For one, it was genuine. "No, I… well, you probably are owed at least so many. I meant one in particular, and an old one."

"I grow _more_ confused. At the least, prince, you have my attention."

He looked at her, saw her watching him, and she was calm again. Whatever storm he'd caused within her last night, she had it well hidden now. "I did you a wrong, a long time ago. I saw something I was not meant to, and I'm sorry for that."

Kara's brows furrowed in as she shook her head, and her lips curved, the silent question written there.

"Before the festival, where you were followed by a shadow. The other girls were taunting you." _That_ , he could tell, she remembered. Something glinted in her eyes. Old hurts. He knew what those looked like. "There wasn't much I could do, of course. So I thought."

"You'd have just made it worse if you tried. Cut close to the edge toying with them pair as you did." She snorted, looking out at the sun where it was cut in half by the horizon. Clouds broke the sky further, purple and hazy smoke. It was a pretty night coming, and a long one. "I still appreciated it, though. They were small respites, when you picked a fight with the other girls."

"You went to the gardens later, after this one such fight. I saw you, from one of the high windows where I'd been reading, and I hid when you looked for watchers." Loki watched the side of her face go smooth, the mask imperfect. She was startled, badly, and he took no pleasure in it. He no longer wanted to win points off her. "Proving the girls wrong. No little barbarian in any realm would dance the way I witnessed. I didn't think what else it might mean, I was too surprised. Your true secret remained safe, but I'd stolen this small one by accident." He shook his head with another small laugh. "The most elegant _fuck you_ I've ever seen. I never forgot the hour you stole in that garden, meant for no one but yourself. I tried, because I knew I wasn't supposed to see, but I didn't forget. I kept the memory. Like a shadow."

Kara stayed quiet for a long time, watching the sun fall further yet. The hazy sky began to sprinkle light with stars. Like fae-flowers, in full bloom. "Thank you for the book. The Queen waited a while to give it to me, if you found it when I assume. She chose a good time to do so. I did not tell you that part of the tale."

"I'm glad. I've never had a chance to read it. _The Misadventures of Princess Redalia Milkwyne_ , _Her_ _Cat Guard, and the Royal Hand_ , wasn't it? Silly sounding thing for a history. Very Elvish. Probably a great deal of fun." He remembered all that perfectly well, too. "I should have tried to do more."

She spoke in a whisper, and he couldn't hear clearly the emotion in it. Just that there was some. "You would have been told not to."

"I _was_ told not to. I should have tried anyway. There would have been consequences, and maybe even some of them would have made it worse than I might have intended, but I could have at least tried to fight." His throat felt thick. "I could have used an actual friend, then. I might have tried. But I didn't."

"I told you, I'm not a confessional." She inhaled, and the words didn't have the same force as the last time she said them.

"I'm not trying to confess. I'm sorry. Because there were moments I could have changed what my life turned into, and I missed all of them. Now it's nigh on too late." He pushed a hand through his hair, tired again, but not heavy. "I don't want to hurt you. I know what I am. That's why I told you to go away."

"What do you actually want?"

"I want you to stay, but I can't ask for that. I can't change what I did, and I can't change what's coming next. It's all falling apart. There are countless moments where it could have been different, and none of them happened. I have no right to ask anything of you. What I am supposed to do is wait out this last night, alone, and see how they come for me in the morning. It'll be better for them then. They say daylight cleanses all the shadows, although they'll never think how waiting behind the sun is just more darkness."

"You didn't ask me for anything this time, prince. You didn't set any bargains. I asked the question, knowing what I was doing." Kara sighed, not looking at him. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm not being clear about what I want." Gods, he ached clear through to the bone. It was a raw thing, born of being miserable and alone and unwanted. "I am not one to be honest when I need to be honest the most."

"I still heard you. I'm not a fool, Loki. Almost everyone looks at their possible death thinking about how to steal a little more life." She was still looking at the sky. "I keep thinking you were someone else then, but you weren't, not really. You're the same person. Maybe that's the problem. It's harder for princes and kings and queens to change, because the rules are so much older. Little cages, all pretty and gilt, keeping you all bent inside. I didn't envy it. The other girls clamored for cages of their own, earning them by how strong they clung to such similar rules. I saw enough."

"Didn't you have to change?"

Kara laughed, small and sour. "I feel like I haven't been anyone since I was a child. I am my own mask, Prince Loki. I fit where I have to, to do the job I'm bid. I don't have these problems."

"You were someone back then, though. Ago. I remember. Enough a person that it felt the same seeing you again. You are not hollow. There's ghosts and shadows filling Asgard, but you're not one of them."

That made her quiet again, and this time he heard the emotion plain. "Thank you."

Loki remembered the wine he'd brought with him from the libraries, reaching for the tall flask and looking around for goblets. A shadow passed over him as she stepped down from the window. There was a cabinet in the corner, and she found a pair of old but clean goblets easily in it.

The last edges of the fading sun reflected in the wine, red and dark, its own echo of a blood moon. They drank a while in silence, waiting for full night, and it was pleasant, in its way.


	22. Chapter 22

(First part of today's double finale update)

22.

. . .

Asgard's seasons were unnatural things, kept to schedules and reliable predictions by hidden technology and the skyseers who tended the machines. Autumns meant long months for a good harvest's end before the typically mild winters, and many nights of storms to drive away the gathered heat of summer. But there were also softer evenings like this one in between the rains, where few clouds gathered to block the still-warm night and its ribbons of blue nebulae and the constellations that, to old scholars, marked the histories of the lost. Some of those histories were all but forgotten themselves, stars that once had names and stories and now often just twinkled, silent.

Some were newer, and from the private lounge where handmaidens had once laughed and did their daily work and rested comfortably, the prince and the hunter could see the star that marked Frigga's high place. They didn't speak of her now, though in a way she whispered along behind every word. Loki told Kara a few other stories instead, because the libraries he still cherished knew how to remember those old stars. He remembered the Valkyries who gave up their names and their lives to lock in the queen of Hel, whose stars gleamed green and bright to keep her caged. He remembered the one that marked Odin's own grandfather, who'd run off into a mystery that reignited a war.

Then there was the old warrior who wanted to die in battle and instead actually fell to a heart attack from a mouse startling him at night. Every warrior of Asgard that had known him promptly lied on his behalf and the wee mouse became, in a particularly over the top tale, some sort of alien rat-guard designed by ancient Kree to fell this particular old man for reasons that got muddied with every new retelling.

Reality had created stranger things, so the big lie passed thin muster and even now the warrior had his place in the sky - a brownish dwarf star deep in a constellation that no one at the funeral had the heart to point out was long ago known, of course, as the Mouse.

That tale got a laugh out of Kara, an honest one that rippled through the night like clear water across pebbles. Loki liked that sound, wishing he could have heard it often earlier in his life, but at least it was here now. He knew if he died tomorrow, there would be no star for him. Not even a small and forgettable one, lost in some mythologically appropriate cluster or behind the old sky-serpents. It didn't need saying, just acceptance.

It was too late for much else, so instead he watched her laugh, and lost himself for a while in wishing that things had been different, knowing that was a waste of his dwindling time.

After the stories, they were quiet again for a while, drinking the wine and thinking their own private thoughts. The nebulae bloomed stronger colors when the night was at its darkest, the heart of one of them revealing a thin but beautiful string of purple among the blue that might have been a new galaxy thriving among that sea of light.

Loki finally broke the quiet, no longer interested in lying tonight. "Why won't you hate me?"

Kara kept looking at the nebula. "I'm angry, prince. I get angry a lot, but I don't have time for hate. It's a powerful thing, that much emotion, and not something I'm going to give up for small reasons." She snorted and looked down into the last dregs of the wine in her goblet, a soft noise, not bitter. "I didn't hate the other girls, and they tried to break me, make me more like them for years. They resented that I always seemed just a little different, and yet still kept the Queen's favor. People smell the strange on you, even when your very career depends on trying to fit in. I've noticed that. It's harder to pretend sometimes than it is to fight. I'd rather fight, I suppose. Not everyone can."

She took a breath, her words not answering the heart of his question, answering it in a way he could hear anyway. "If they'd really known why I stood where I did, how many times I've put on my blades and watched men gurgle for their lives while gentler folk slept, watched a Queen at the darker and dirtier work of ruling, I don't think they would have been so envious. I can't hate them for being fools."

"Does that make me a fool, then?"

She glanced at him, one eyebrow arched in gentle mocking. "In the annals of loaded questions, _there's_ a superweapon."

That pulled a roar of a laugh out of Loki, unexpected and real and joyful, tilting him near off the side of his chair. "I swear I hadn't intended that, but you're right, it is."

"I don't believe you," said Kara, and to his astonishment, she was still teasing. The air around her seemed made of light and behind her head ringed the bluest nebula, and while she smiled, he first righted himself on his chair. Then he leaned to kiss her, a soft brush of his lips only, waiting for her to pull away. She had every right to change her mind, to walk away, to leave him alone for his last night.

She didn't, and he moved to pull back instead, wanting to warn her off, tell her there was still time to consider hating him, and to leave. He realized there was a hand against his face, a trace of fingers across the high sweep of his cheekbone, and then the hand moved back into the fall of dark hair at the base of his neck. She kissed him back, firmly, and he tried to say something, his lips parting against hers. At the taste of her breath along his tongue, he forgot whatever that word might have been and leaned in to the sensation of that hand at his neck slipping further up to trace careful fingernails across his scalp.

His hands found her body and pulled her gently from her chair towards him, finding two belts wrapped tight around her waist, and all their cargo bumping underneath his own fingertips and that shook him loose from his entrancement for a moment. "How many godsdamned knives do you _have_?"

"Truthfully, sometimes turns out to be one less than I need." She laughed and looked down at the array of small weapons, not apologetic, but a little embarrassed and a lot amused. She toyed with one of the buckles, and by the motion of her fingers he realized it would be better to let her deal with them - there was some sort of additional mechanic to the clasp, no doubt meant to fend off someone in a fight who thought they had a clever idea.

He waited until the belts were loosened, and then he found a strip of skin under the hem of her tunic where it had pulled up. Not all the skin of her waist was soft, there were scars near the lift of her hip and along her back, and Loki let his fingers trace them, too, as he leaned in for another kiss. A brief one, because what he wanted to do, and then did, was run his lips along the soft line of her jaw, and find the curve of her throat. She leaned her head back at his nuzzle, exposing the softness there, and now both her hands were in his hair, stroking and pulling gently while he breathed in all of her.

He felt the rumble of her words in her throat before she said them, a pleasant vibration against his lips where they pressed against his bared teeth, trying to not bite in desire. Not yet. "Gods, you're warm. I didn't know you'd be that warm."

He held still a second, his thoughts swirling, suddenly struck with the reminder of what he actually was. There hadn't been any fear in what she said, or disgust, but he could add that all by himself. Kara's hands tightened in his hair, sensing his distress, and she pulled him back away from her neck to force her mouth against his again. More of that hungry pressure, hot and full. He felt the lick of her tongue against his, the taste of the fine red wine and the elderflowers that made it. "I don't care what you are. Forget that for right now."

"I can't," he said against her mouth, and her hand came back to his face, touching his brow, then the corner of his lip with featherlike grace. He grabbed at the wrist and brushed his lips and the tip of his tongue against the palm, pausing when she cupped it along his jaw, enjoying the sensation as it joined all the rest of the building heat along his nerves. She pressed in further to him, and now she caressed the length of his tense neck with her other hand, her mouth working its way up to the soft place behind his ear and his jaw, and the kiss there was long and suckling and not gentle.

 _Wanting_ was such a small word for what roared inside his chest. It had been a long time since someone touched Loki. Since he'd let someone touch him, since he admitted to himself he needed to be touched again, to feel like a person, if not a whole one. Wanting to be wanted, even if just for a few hours. It wasn't love, it couldn't be. They still didn't know each other, not really, and there was no time to be better friends. Here also he had no illusions. But still, that tiny word that contained an inferno. Wanting.

One night, in shadow, for the old memories that hadn't been made.

He couldn't forget what he was, but the nearness of her, the smell of leather and soft honey and some warm and dusty smell, like a sweetened old book rediscovered amidst ancient stacks, made his own horror scream elsewhere, quiet and small. He touched her again, looking to curl his arms around her waist and crush her close, but his hands knew what he truly wanted more than he, and his long fingers slid up under her tunic to find all the other curves of her. He reached higher than he thought, and that was how he realized she'd silently lifted herself from her chair, coming to sit astride his lap, the pressure of her breast now full in his hand.

Soft breathing, like music, as his hands continued to explore her. He wasn't sure how her tunic slipped all the way off, if he'd done it, if she had, he was too busy finding other scars, wondering what their stories were. There was one long slice down her side, just behind her left breast. It gleamed pale under the starlight, this one more than the others looking like it might still hurt when weather turned ill, and he kissed his way along the length of it, feeling that hurt for his own.

Her hand traced a gentle path down his spine as he did, his own shirt's ties pulled free an eternity ago and the fabric long gone. Air drifted cooler against his skin, and she was right, he didn't know he could still feel embers underneath the surface. Yet they burned at every touch, hottest along his thighs where they shifted under her when she lifted up and pressed the length of her body hard against his torso.

There was a narrow bed in this private lounge, more of a long chaise, but as she pulled his face back up to hers one more time, her teeth pulling gently at his lip, her breath filling his mouth like sacred smoke, he wondered if they'd bother making it there.

She pulled away a second later, her hands dropping with a brush across his bare chest, a touch of pressure across those thighs and then along all the rest of him, still in his trousers, and she tugged at the belt he still wore. They were going to _make_ it to the bed, by Gods, because by the promise of her touch, that was where she was going to drag him if he didn't rise to his feet and move.

Kara didn't get out of his way, however, deliberately staying where she was, so as he rose he slid against her. Taller than she by far, his hips found the softness of her belly where she pressed taut against him and then moved, teasing what lay at the base of his thighs, the smile behind the kiss on his chest saying she knew full well what she was doing to him. "I thought you didn't torture," he said, hearing the pained gasp in his voice.

"I don't like causing _unnecessary_ pain. You, however, have already been a pain in my arse for days, did you think I'd give in and make everything simple?" Fingers dug into his shoulders, and he craved more. He went to press against her again and suddenly she wasn't there.

Loki froze for a moment, frightened that now, at the height of his want, she would choose to leave him as wounded as possible. Then he saw the shadow of her between him and that nearby bed. Her hands pulled at him, still toying at his waist, and there were no tricks to his belt to stop her. He saw the glint of more of her knives as the rest of her clothes were set aside, and thought to ask if there might be something even more unpleasant hidden where he might want to find it the least, and then decided if that was how he was going to go, so be it.

They were bare now, and the night was crawling deeper black, swallowing the stars. If the air cooled further, they didn't know or care. She lay there, peaceful for a moment, and he realized that she was allowing him leverage. Using that, there was no point in only him suffering tease and torment. He held a wrist out of his way, gentle but implacable, and his mouth, open and full of heat, traveled his chosen path of her down until he found that place that felt hot enough to match.

Her hips lifted, and she made a soft noise, but his arm was long enough to hold that one of hers while he worked to make her feel the same agony that coursed through him. Her other arm, he allowed to stay free. She didn't try to push him away. Instead her fingers tangled thick in his hair, and by their tightness and the rise of a clenched thigh he knew she hurt just as deep for that same wanting. He paused at the right moment to cause her a moan of frustration, nuzzling there at the soft hair, and then the belly. He distracted himself with the soft curve along the buried bone of a hip just long enough for her arm to break free of his grip.

She slid down a little even as she now had both hands against his shoulders, tugging at him. She didn't want any more games. He could have toyed with them both for hours, but by the next groan she made at the bare and teasing lick of his tongue, he decided that would be more pain than either of them wanted.

He rose instead, her moving with him, and she guided, and thought left, and all those clever ideas, all of the broken past, all of him was instead lost to the sea of another stolen hour, under the garden that was a darkening sky and all its fading stars.

 _Once_ , he thought at one point, disjointed and broken and glad for it. They would have only this once.

In the wake of that pleasure they made for each other, he found he was wrong again, and the next time, not long after, she stayed atop him, in full control of what she wanted to where he simply obeyed, and the sounds they made would have called a guard, if Loki had not chosen so abandoned a place in the shadowed palace.

And the next, slower and not made of agony, but only the softness of all those promises that had never been made. They slept in between, more like a drift, a dreamless haze where the past lived for a few hours and they could pretend it had all been something more, and there would be no more to say until dawn threatened to break and take them apart, as it had the last time they had almost been friends.

. . .

Loki could see the first gleam of morning light along her outline, as she pulled her tunic back on. As much as he wanted to, he could not stop the sun from rising. He watched her instead of the window, not sure of what to say. If there was anything left to say. Then he remembered that, yes, there was.

He shifted on the long chaise, not wanting to move. He didn't want to speak, either, but it was going to be necessary. The silence between them right now was warm, and he liked it very much. The sound of a thin blanket shifting along his bare waist drew a look from her, though, and he knew it was time to break the moment. "Odin is alive."

Kara looked down at herself without a word and snapped her belts back into place.

"I left him on Midgard, like an exile, and not unlike what he did to Thor back when so much of this happened. He's been masked from most eyes, but that won't last much longer. Heimdall will soon find him once I'm gone. I'll tell you exactly where he is, if you still want, but before you win that from me, a word of counsel."

"What's that?" She was neutral again, but no thin whisper of controlled coldness trailed underneath her tone.

"Don't kill him, Kara." Loki watched her move to where her soft boots lay not far from his. "It's what he wants, and for my own anger, I wouldn't give it to him. I think that's why this terrible thing I did was so easy. He let me, I suspect. But I couldn't kill him." He paused, thinking. "Where I left him, they think he's nothing but a small old man, and that's what he thinks, too. All he can remember is that his children never visit and that his wife is dead. So the nurses meant to tend that old crow leave him be. A bitter story, a common one, and in its way, a true one, too."

"Where?"

"New York, it's…" Loki trailed off, looking at her, reading her face. She knew where and what the human city was, if vaguely. "It was my fault, and it was his fault, and you think it was your fault, too."

Kara abruptly turned away. He finally hurt her, and he hadn't wanted to. "I was supposed to be there," she whispered.

"You tried to be. With all my anger, even I must say he tried to save her. If I'd suspected what would be made, I wouldn't have said what I did. _If_ is the cruelest damned word in the universe, and you can't kill a word, not with any of your knives. But killing Odin won't change what we feel, or what happened. It's a shit of an obvious lesson to pull out of this mess I made, but there it is. She's gone, and we're all still here. For a little longer, anyway."

She finished strapping her gear back into place, looking back at the sky as the first morning clouds blazed. Then she stepped a little closer and sat on the end of the bed, near where his bare feet poked out from the coverlet. With a small smile whose intent he couldn't read, she patted at the bottom of one of them. Her fingers were warm, and he wished she wouldn't leave, knowing she had to. "What are those books you've been reading?"

"Nothing. A poor idea. I don't know. They're about ways to travel that only the stupid and the mad would ever try. Admittedly, I'm pretty much both."

Her brow furrowed, seeming to let that detail go. "You only die today if you choose. I can't rescue you, but you can still try to save yourself."

"I don't know why I should. The woods close by are full of angry men that would be shocked to learn they agree with me on something."

"Loki." She trailed off into silence. Then she looked at him, sober. "She died believing you were still her son. She died hoping you could yet change. I know that."

 _I wasn't her son_ , he thought, but he couldn't say it. It wasn't the full truth, and it'd been the heart of the last awful thing he'd said to Frigga. Another regret, when he carried so many. "So what should I do?"

"Honestly?" She laughed. "Is that an actual question?"

"It's an actual question. From someone who should have been murdered probably forty times over in the last decade alone to a hired weapon, what do you think I should do?"

Her laugh faded as she regarded him again. "Do what you seem to be good at. Drop everything and run like hell is after you. For in all truth, it is." She squeezed his foot when it was his turn to look away. "If you regret, if you told me the truth at any point, there is nothing you can do about it if you die. Running now might be the last chance you can ever have to rewrite the book. It's not always cowardice, that choice. Sometimes it's the only way you're going to survive."

"Even if I run, I'm still me."

"So you are. I'm not going to absolve you, I can't. I know a fair amount of why your brother and the lords of the palace deserve to hunt you, that there will be few places safe beyond this realm. A little flip of the scenario, I just might have been with them, and not here right now." Kara sighed. "But I made my promise and kept to my contract. That's my advice, on behalf of someone who would not want you to die, even for all of what you've done. Not yet. Run, you idiot. For her sake."

Loki licked his lips. Then he gestured at the thin gold table, at the sealed letter still laying among the few things he'd brought. "That's yours. Didn't know how I'd get a copy to you. The official one is already where it belongs."

She frowned at him, then got up to go and flip the flat little letter over. Marked with the royal seal, even if under his mask it was just a piece of wax. It broke easily under her fingers, and she unfolded it to read the legalese. "Dear gods."

"Your House tried to haggle. I didn't bother fighting them, it simply needed to be done, and fast. Gods know, as pinching as the King can be, he can afford it. If he returns, he's going to be furious enough about the spaceport I commanded built, won't notice hardly anything else. Fourteen pieces of public work tied up for centuries, sorted out with a good pen and a fair amount of cranking at the lords. At least I managed _something_ useful before I flamed out, though it will be small and forgettable." She stopped reading the letter and stared at him, shocked. "It's done. The contract is dissolved. If you tell me the Queen wouldn't wish to see me dead, I say she wouldn't want you chained to this mad old house watching over our wrecks for all time."

"Dissolved?" She was aghast. "You bought off my entire damned license!"

He shrugged, squinting unwillingly at the first lip of the sun against the horizon. "I did."

"For _fuck's_ sake. You don't do anything by halves, do you?" She flipped the letter over, staring at the blank back of it as if the mystery of life might be written there.

"Go do something else. Or this, but on your terms. Get, and I mean this kindly and respectfully, a life. Staying in the palace for most of a millennia the way you have is a dreadful fate. Look at the terrible personal decisions it drives you to make." The obvious occurred to him as she flung a small chair pillow in the general direction of his head. He barely noticed that, dodging with a crane of his neck. "Oh, right, as a former handmaiden to the Queen, you can take a parcel of land and and a Lady's formal title if you should choose. Your contemporaries certainly ruddy did." He flicked a hand at her. "I think you ought probably wait until the firestorm here settles out, then plea claim to whoever sits their ass on the gold next. Might be a year or two, but that's a bit of reliable future to build on. Do with that what you will."

She went back to looking at him, sounding baffled. "I…"

"Do not thank me again, I'm not worth it." He sighed, feeling small and sad, looking at the dawn as it sped up, pouring golden across the far fields. It should have been a beautiful sight, any other morning but this last one. "And this time, it's up to me to say you need to go, while you can. Please go, Lady Kara."

Kara didn't move. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know yet. I have a little time to decide. Maybe an hour or two before I hear the movement in the halls, see the train of Thor's friends come up to the gates." He inhaled, soft through his nostrils, trying to keep the scent of wine and old books fresh. "I'm going to think about your advice. And terrible, last ditch ideas."

She didn't say anything. At last, there was nothing left to be said. With the letter still hung limp from her hand, she crossed to him and kissed his forehead, soft but warm, and he closed his eyes to enjoy the presence of her while he could.

When he opened them again, she was gone.

An hour later, Loki still lay in the chaise, naked and alone, watching the sun glint off the breastplate of a distant warrior with a blade in his hand. At last, he made his decision. In his way, it was the only one he could make.


	23. Chapter 23

Epilogue: Ago, and Again

. . .

 _Ago_ ~

The Norns slept in a liminal place between space and time, where the water hung thick and black and each droplet contained countless dreams from countless worlds, none of them coherent, all of them real and present and rich. The Queen of Asgard stood on the smooth black rock, worn to silk by the magic and the wet, and she looked at the shifting images of the multitude Norns in turn.

They were young and they were old and they were eternal. Sometimes their faces were made of a thousand wrinkles, turning them to gnarled ancient bark, and sometimes they were stone. They were not humanoid. They were everything. They were every woman, and they were three and one, and among them they held all the forgotten dreams of the past, and hopeful dreams of the future.

They were beautiful and awful, and Karnilla, her hands still bleeding, lay adrift not far away. For how much she had wanted to awaken them to her own cause, now the old sorceress could not bear the physical weight of their presence. Frigga could hear the sobbing, small and childlike now, and there was a trace of pity inside her. If only a trace. Karnilla was marked deep now with what she owed, and that was fair.

Here in their own place, the Norns shifted around her, a circle that jerked and leaped through seconds and nightmares, an eerie and unpleasant thing to watch. Still Frigga did, unblinking, showing them no fear. With something like respect, they spoke to her in easier voices than they had in the mortal realm. "Do you understand what we mean when we say you will be cursed?"

"Knowledge can be a poison, Norns. I've drunk from that cup for a long time, and I've tasted the acid before. I have built an immunity to much, but still it will burn my throat to drink what you will tell me." She watched them shiver between seconds, catching glimpses of other people's dreams in their drifting faces. "I understand."

"You are going to die, Queen of Asgard, and you will not be old." The Norns sounded the words like the chime of distant bells. "Know that we have dreamed the hour, and seen the blade that stings thee, and it will not be changed with a wish or a whisper."

"Will you curse me with that hour?"

"We curse you with knowing that it will come in a rush, and that it will hurt, and that you will leave things unfinished."

She shrugged, accepting their words. If there was any tremble within her, it was buried deep. "She comes for all. If it be sooner for me, then I still cannot fret. I can only live each day until then."

"She will come to you as your family weeps, as your sons are sundered, as your husband doubts. The house is divided, was divided, will be divided, our Queen. She will come to you as you die for a small life for the sake of one son, itself the flicker of a candle, so brief we can barely dream her face before she is gone. You will die for another son's mistakes and a husband's bravado and a hidden fury and it will bring a war that will ignite the infinite cosmos. After that, we have not yet dreamed. _She_ keeps it sacred and secret, for even Death does not yet know if all will survive. We must heed Her more than we may heed thee, our Queen."

"What small life costs my own?"

"A girl. A moment. A memory. Nothing that lasts. She will be cared for, and then she will be gone. The sorrows will remain. It will be a flashpoint, this death of yours, and after it, everything will begin to change."

Frigga considered that, her palms still pressed neatly together. If the palms were cold, it would be a secret. Her voice was calm and strong. "So you tell me that I will die too young to be very old, and that I will die for love."

The Norns were silent at that, acknowledging the Queen with silky glimmers in their sea of eyes.

"You curse me with the greatest fate of all, and so I must bear it, with as much gladness as I can. You tell me that there will be change after I die, and that too is a weight, and I must be glad for that, too, for there can be no new life without change." She lifted her head, and before the squareness of her shoulders, the Norns shrunk into the motions of small and alien bows. "I can do nothing more valuable than give my life for my family. It is that same choice made that brings me to you now. So you give me a tesseract, where I know now that in a true way, this is also the same moment I have died and will die. I have fought for love, I will fight for love, and I will die for it and because of it."

They shrank further at the clear ringing bell of her voice, that voice that proved her the Queen alone.

"I thank you, Norns, for the gift of this curse. I will cherish it, my private jewel kept close to my heart, and with my dying breath I will remember you, and I will remember the value of love."

"Your Majesty," whispered the Norns as one, who she knew had not been trying to defeat or break her. The Norns simply were - and they were not mortal. But they also knew their place, and even here in their own sacred space they bent the knee. "We curse thee, and we love thee, and your dreams will be and are sweet to see, until they are gone. They will live with us, and we will hold them." Then slower, like syrup, for they were also something _other_. "But you could still leave this weak one for us, for a gift."

"No," said Frigga, implacable. "When I came to Nornheim to end this, I thought I might kill her outright. I said as much. But the last blow is not for me to take. I must give it to Asgard entire, and it must be seen. I must be _fair_. You know the value of this."

"Yes. We see. As you wish. Our Queen," whispered the Norns, and the shadows became a real and wild thing, and the waters rose to grasp her and her broken enemy. And then time came around again, and she saw Kara with eyes as wide and frightened as the girl who she protected.

And also in time, the Queen died for love, and she felt the word on her breath as the wound in her side no longer hurt, content with knowing change would come fresh to old Asgard at last. Like the flowers she had loved so much, come and gone, and leaving something better with their passing.

. . .

~ _Later_

It was a soft autumn night, and it was not Loki's last. He sat alone on the edge of a familiar rooftop, gritty concrete and stone under his rump, and the silvery sphere of the Midgard moon hung bright and lovely in the dark. He scratched idly at his bicep under his black shirt with its blacker symbol, thinking of old memories, many of which still hurt him. At the same time, many of them had also found a new place inside his heart that was not buried so deep that they would fester any longer. The smell of asphalt was in the air, and that was less pleasant, but he could also easily smell the past from up here. He kept that close, like bottled perfume.

He had fallen for a long, dark time, dying slow until he committed himself to understanding the nature of his injuries, self-inflicted and not. Change - or simply give up and die. There were only these two choices, and he would bleed until he accepted one or the other. He hadn't died in Asgard after all, dropping it all and running just before it was too late, taking that scrap of well-meant advice, thinking of places _between_ and all the shadows and the dim, and of all the moments in his own life that hadn't happened. Thinking of those scant stolen hours. Still, the bleeding didn't stop for many years.

And then it had, mostly, and now he understood change, if not found it ever particularly easy. It was not simple forgiveness, and it was not redemption, but it was still that rare miracle. A second chance to rewrite his own book.

Regrets? Loki knew he would always carry a few, though he also knew he didn't always have to carry them alone anymore. That was going to continue to surprise him for a long time. Humans did that, he found. A hardy people. Resilient. They'd faced him at his worst, after all, and he'd been with them as they faced even worse yet.

Regardless, he no longer regretted quite everything. There were memories he brought out to consider from time to time, putting them with the rest of the events in his life that told him that his decisions had become more painful than ever - but that they had also, finally, been right ones. He couldn't regret those, even with some - many, if he were to be honest with himself - mistakes made along the way.

She had been right, Kara. And she had been wrong, too. It _was_ up to him to save himself. But all those memories, missed and not, they helped save him, just as well.

Loki thought of the question one of these new friends had asked him before she left to be on the run from her own troubles for a while, and knew that even then, another miracle, he had told her the truth. She was back now, and he was glad to see her safe, but he thought on her question a lot. Especially of late, when the nights were cool and dark and he was a just a little sorrowful that Earth's skies didn't hold grand blue nebulae to study and think about. The constellations here were different, and he didn't know all the stories of this world's stars. But there were stories waiting here all the same.

 _Were you ever in love?_

 _No_ , he'd told his young human friend, in a moment of earnest stoicism. Love was not built in short hours and intended cruelties and around the corners of mistakes and moments that didn't happen. He'd barely made true friends of his own until these recent years, Loki was not about to claim he ever earned more than that.

But he had wanted it.

Somewhere out there, a hunter was still walking the shadows, and she was doing it on her terms. He kept these thoughts and their memories a buried but soft secret in a way Frigga would have understood more than he knew. Loki knew he had no right to wonder where Kara was right now, or know if she were happy, but sometimes, on these cool nights where he remembered he could still be warm, he thought about her, and wished he could have loved.

 _~fin_

. . .

 _"Could I revive within me_

 _Her symphony and song…"_

 _~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan, or a Vision in a Dream_

8/18/17 All relevant rights belong to Marvel with no infringement intended. All blame goes to the black suit, and the little bastard wearing it.

 _. . ._

Notes:

I owe you an apology. When I started this particular story, I set out with it in mind that I was trying to do something different, a take on Loki that was more divorced from the version you might know from the Codex Loki works. And as you have by now figured out, possibly around the same time I did when writing the fic, it's a stealth prequel to the Codex, with some details to it that are possibly fairly controversial in context. That was not the plan, but here we are.

That _asshole_.

I don't think it changes the overall tone of the Codex works, and it can still stand separate, which is why at this time I'm not moving it into the Verse folder. My niche is genfic, and my position has always been that Loki, in canon MCU and as his own version in the AUish bulk of the Codex, is not ready for real love. He's been barely in the thriving houseplant stage of recovery addiction. Boy needs a cactus, something low maintenance. I wouldn't trust him to babysit my cat.

I should probably consider that phrasing. Anyway. For anyone alive, I don't think it changes wanting to be loved.

And I'm not going to lie. It was the suit. It is still that _goddamn black suit_.

I needed this. Depending on how you feel about the slightly different tone of this story and the first actual honest to god sex scene I've written for a fanfic in a long-ass time, please select one response from the following choice, and know I mean them both sincerely:

 _I'm Sorry / You're Welcome_

 _. . ._

Lorelei and Amora are old friends of the Codex. Ulf is a minor name taken from the Marvel wiki. Karnilla is finally seen 'on camera' for the first time, after being built up in The Lion in Spring, itself a more serious bookend to this story than I intended, and she is also slightly referenced in other fics. Her descriptions are borrowed from her comics appearance, and the Norns are a hearty blend of what we saw in Age of Ultron's deleted scenes and some shit I just made up.

Kara is borrowed from Kára, a Valkyrie from the Poetic Edda, reborn from a mortal woman and the spirit of Sigrun, and I wasn't about to use special characters all through this fic to write her name properly because I am very lazy. This Kara would resent being called a Valkyrie (not to mention that doing so would open up all sorts of Fresh Weirdness when you look at some of the rumors about the upcoming movie), but she takes some of her personality from at least one interpretation of her name - the stormy one.

. . .

It is currently likely there'll be a shorter fic for Halloween, but that depends on what time I have to finish the outline I've got sitting around. If it happens, you'll be getting a much lighter - if gruesome - little horror adventure with Magic Bros Loki & Strange seeking a killer on the road.

As ever, thank you very much for reading!


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